


A Study in Fornication

by sirarthurpornandoyle



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 17:52:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 40,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16791826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirarthurpornandoyle/pseuds/sirarthurpornandoyle
Summary: Dr. John Watson becomes roommates with the sexual consulting detective Sherlock Holmes. He is drawn in by his new companion's abilities and proclivities and comes to know a world of freedom that he had only dreamt about before.





	A Study in Fornication

**Chapter I: Mister Sherlock Holmes**

In the year of 1878, I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine from the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army. Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers as Assistant Surgeon. The regiment was stationed in India at the time, and before I could join in, the second Afghan war had broken out. 

The campaign brought honours and promotion to many, though I suffered a disaster during my time there. During the battle at Maiwand, I was struck in the shoulder by a Jezail bullet, which luckily did not damage my body as badly as it could have. But as I lay there, injured, wondering if I were to fall into the hands of the murderous Ghazis, my orderly Murray picked me up and threw me upon his pack-horse. Murray and I of course were lovers, in the Spartan fashion, as were many of the men in my regiment. The officers turned a blind eye to these encounters, though some actively promoted and even participated in them, with the thought being that they helped bond soldiers together. 

This view must have borne fruit in Murray’s actions, as he carried me to safety at a base hospital in Peshawar, where I rallied. Though I will always be indebted to his bravery, Murray left me soon thereafter, called back to help wounded sufferers once again on the front lines. I can not blame him; it was wartime. And relationships like our did not have much place outside the battalion.

In time, I was discharged, and sent back to England. I had neither kith nor kin in England and was therefore free as air. For a man of my persuasion, the dockside where I first arrived was a veritable wonderland. With a quiet wink and nod, I could find myself in a secluded alley, enjoying the pleasure of a delicate rear end with little trouble; the sailors there were incredible creations, carved from Grecian marble. Each had a smile that melted my heart and provided the softest kisses a man could ever dare to dream about. 

But I knew that life there couldn’t last, and I naturally gravitated toward London, that great metropolis into which the idlers and free-spirits of the Empire irresistibly drained. There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand, leaving a comfortless, meaningless existence, spending such money as I had, perhaps more easily than I ought. I lived on a stipend of eleven shillings and sixpence a day, which was barely enough to buy bread, whiskey, cigars, and have enough left over to enjoy some time with a skilled and flexible man. 

So alarming did the state of my finances become that I soon realized I must either leave London and rusticate somewhere in the country, where it would likely be harder to satisfy some of my indulgences, or make a complete alteration in the state of my living. Choosing the later alternative, I made up my mind to leave the hotel, and take up quarters in some less pretentious and less expensive domicile. 

On the very day that I reached this conclusion, I was standing in the Critereon Bar, when someone tapped me on the shoulder. Turning around, I recognized the bashful but handsome eyes of a young man who had been a dresser under me at Barts. His name was Stamford, and the sight of such a friendly face was indeed a pleasant thing for a lonely man such as myself. I smiled at Stamford as he blushed his greeting, no doubt recalling the time when we had indulged in passions that dared not see the light of day. Seeing an opportunity now to reenact some of our glory days, I invited Stamford to lunch with me at the Holborn, and we started off together in a hansom. 

In the cab, Stamford carefully looked me up and down. “Whatever have you been doing with yourself, Watson?” he asked in undisguised wonder. “You look strong as ever and as brown as a nut.” 

As a man who appreciated the male form, I had always taken great care of my own, engaging in isometric exercises to keep myself in top shape. After the army, and even after my injury, I was in peak condition, my muscles strong as thick ropes. My hand rested now on the slight potbelly that indicated my love of beer, yet still I was often told admiringly by the men I took to bed of my beauty. 

I smiled at Stamford’s clumsy attempts at flattery and told him of my adventures, and misadventures. He leaned in to pay closer attention to my insinuations. Men like us become scholars of subtlety and entendre from a young age, though I kept things vague so as not to tip off our driver. Still, I noticed a flushing in his cheeks and the development of a small bump in his trousers. At one point, he took what I thought was a risky step and brushed his gloved hand against mine. Admonishing him with my eyes, I pulled back. But he gave me a small mischievous look as the cab pulled into our destination. 

“And what are you up to now?” asked Stamford, as we took our seats for dinner, smoothing over his forwardness in the cab. 

“Looking for lodgings,” I said, glancing around. “Trying to solve the problem as to whether it is possible to get comfortable rooms at a reasonable price.”

“That’s a strange thing,” said my companion, with a twinkle in his eye. “You are the second man to-day that has used that expression to me.”

“And who was the first?”

“A fellow working up at the chemical laboratory at the hospital with whom I had an… encounter. Afterwards, he was bemoaning the fact that he could not get someone to go halves with him in some nice rooms which he had found, and which were too much for his purse.”

“By Jove!” I cried. “If he really wants to share expenses, I am the very man for him.” 

He looked at me strangely over the wineglass. “You don’t know Sherlock Holmes, yet,” he said. “Perhaps you would not care to have him as a constant companion.”

“Why, what is there against him?”

“Oh I wouldn’t say there was anything against him. He is a little queer in his ideas—an enthusiast in some branches of science and an overly keen focus on the carnal. Though as far as I know, he is a decent fellow.”

I moved in as close as I dared to Stamford. “You are telling me he is of… our persuasion, correct?”

Stamford looked at me like a caught lamb. “Quite so,” he said. “Though that needs not be the only criterion for two men to get along.”

I dismissed his anxieties with a wave of my hand. For the moment, I was more interested in Stamford’s lips. He was licking them, rekindling the memory of his gentle tongue. “And did you and he enjoy yourselves together?”

“Oh yes,” Stamford blushed again, moving to an almost inaudible whisper. “He has the most incredible cock of anyone I have ever been with.”

I did not care just then to hear of other men’s lengths or girths. Deciding that Stamford’s risk in the cab could be met with my own, I pressed my knee against his under the table when I was sure nobody watched. “Perhaps your memory is faulty. I could gladly remind you of at least one previous priapic encounter. I believe at the time you referred to it as ‘beyond compare.’”

Stamford swallowed, and I could see the lust burning in his eyes. But we had to be discreet. We continued our dinner as if the two of us were nothing more than close friends. Stamford, that terrible bastard, happened to order a plump pork sausage that aroused several competing emotions within me, principally jealousy. I took it upon myself to quaff several extra beers to cool the fire within me. Unfortunately, all it did was made me bolder. 

In the glowing light of the restaurant, Stamford’s beauty bloomed. I began to fall in love with the way he continually brushed his fair hair back from his face. His deep blue eyes had a vitality seldom seen. And his one crooked tooth only enhanced the perfection of the others. If I could have, I would have kissed him right then and there, bringing my head to rest on his comfortable shoulder.

I was in a state of great anxiety when the cheque arrived. Noticing that desire hung thickly around us, I asked him if there was a place we might go for more privacy. A passing waiter glanced awkwardly at me when I said this, though the alcohol made me insensible to his stare. 

We both walked into the coatroom together, where we found ourselves momentarily alone. Stamford again showed brashness I had never imagined by leaning to whisper in my ear. “Come back to my room,” he said, his fingers sweeping past the aching bulge in my crotch. 

I marveled at this grown-up version of Stamford, far more forward than in our school days. Had his encounter with this Sherlock Holmes character had anything to do with it?

Interminable minutes passed as we rode the cab to his place. For the benefit of the driver and others around, we embraced one another goodbye as I prepared to feint leaving him. We both took the opportunity to hold on for longer to one another than should have been proper. He palmed me a key and went inside. 

Breathing heavily, I walked around the block for as long as I dared. My dick had been tucked behind my belt for a good part of the evening, while my mind churned with thoughts of what I would to do Stamford once we were good and properly alone. Deciding that enough time had passed, I went up to the door and slipped the key into the lock. 

Stamford took my breath away. He leaned against a wooden vanity in the low light, his body barely concealed beneath his undershirt, underwear, socks, and garters. The muscles in his shoulders were well defined, his abdomen a perfect specimen beneath the tight cloth. Fair hair sprouted from his legs, and I recalled how smoothly my own legs had once slid against them. His eyes shone like sapphires as he pushed the flaxen bangs of his hair from them.

“Am I everything you remember?”

I gasped. “Even better.”

Crossing the room, I took the Adonis in my arms, pressing my bushy mustache to his mouth for one of the most tender kisses I’d had in a long time. My hands rubbed sensuously over his body, my fingers drinking in every inch of his being. He yelped as I grabbed his glutes—a cry of joy. 

Loosening my necktie, I knelt down on my knees. I could no longer stand not to have him in my mouth. His endowment stood out erect and ready as I pulled down his underwear and licked the muscles of his Apollo’s Belt. One of my fingers entered the crevice of his downy butt cheeks and toyed playfully with his hole. I rubbed my beard against his balls, sending uncontrolled shivers of pleasure through Stamford. 

The glans of his cock glistened with precum in the golden light, its tip poking coquettishly from a foreskin sheath. My tongue tasted this delightful indulgence, one hand wrapped around his shaft as the other continued its eager dance against his butthole. Taking the head into my mouth, I twirled my tongue over the tip and took back his foreskin. Stamford practically fell back against the wall, enraptured by my carnal skills. 

“Oh, John,” he whispered, no doubt reminded of how much we had once enjoyed the pleasures of our entwined bodies. 

My lips slid up and down his cock, each movement bringing him further into my throat, and my face closer to his body. Pulling him all the way out, I squeezed his sopping wet shaft and then plunged all the way to the base, burying my nose in the curls of his pubic hair. I did this several more times, Stamford convulsing with unbridled delight.

After some time, I stood and the two of us got to work unbuttoning my coat and shirt, the prodigious hairs of my chest peeking from my undershirt and suspenders. Stamford undid the buttons of my tweed trousers and reached into my pants. Taking the bulk of my cock into his hand, he pulled it out and placed it against his.

There is no need for me to detail my measurements in the Queen’s Imperial. Suffice it to say that I had been with a fair number of men, and seen a wide variety of specimens in all lengths, sizes, and thicknesses—finding pleasure in each. But one thing that has been clear to me for a long time is that I am rather above average in this department. In fact, there have been only a few dicks that come within or exceeded the same range as my own.

Just now, captured in Stamford’s hand, my beast rubbed against his. When lined up together, my cock extended a way past his; and its girth was noticeably thicker. Stamford was practically ensorcelled by this prize, his eyes unable to believe its dimensions. Like a man bewitched, he lowered himself down to the floor. No doubt any thoughts of Sherlock Holmes and his supposedly magnificent member were now fully banished from his mind.

Stamford ran his incredible mouth up and down the length of my dick, kissing and licking every spot he found and inducing sensations of wonder in me. When his lips curled over my cockhead, he paused and opened his mouth just a bit. Understanding what he wanted, I rocked my hips back and forth ever so slightly, loving the feeling of plunging into his oral pleasure palace. But I knew most men had trouble accommodating my sex by mouth alone and I did not try to press too far. Stamford did his best to capture as much of me as possible but soon I could see he was interested in a different sort of indulgence. 

By now, Stamford was naked on the floor below me, and was arching his smooth buttocks into the air like a rutting dog. Licking two fingers, I knelt down and gave him what he wanted—a little pressure on his trembling hole. He moaned as I rubbed and managed to lodge just a bit more of my cock in his mouth. Continuing my backdoor explorations, I allowed a fingertip to slip past his pucker. He rewarded me with another whimper and an eager shaking of his rear. 

Pretty soon, the convulsions were too much for both of us. Stamford’s blue eyes glanced up at mine, entreating us to go over to the nearby bed. I was only too happy to oblige. He stood once again and pressed his face to mine, our bodies caressing one another. It felt so good to wrap my arms around his shoulders and feel the pressure of his own strength, his chest pressed to mine, his hips against my own. We whispered tender delights into each others’ ears.

With his wrists locked behind my head, he pulled back and gazed into my eyes. We held this position for a moment, memories of our encounters back in medical school flooding through my mind. With Stamford, it had always been more than a quick grunting fuck. I cared for him, deeply and honestly, just as much as any man has loved a close friend or companion. He had been true to me and the pleasures we gave one another. For that, I would always hold for him a place in my heart.

He now led me over to the bed, sliding his body face-down over the blanket. I was enthralled watching him stroke his manhood against the covers, his eager desire obvious. Doffing the remainder of my clothing, I placed my hands on either side of his hips and pulled his buttocks to my face. I rubbed my beard over those peach fuzz cheeks, inhaling his animal scent with zeal.

Reaching over to a side cabinet, I found the bottle that Stamford always kept there. A corked white flask, it was filled with oil from the cocoanut tree—an expensive indulgence, yet one often necessary for men in my situation. Originating in the subcontinent, the oil has been reputed across the far and near east for its health benefits for centuries. It has a distinct succulent flavor and exemplary properties for particular masculine acts, finding mention in certain bawdy versions of Burton’s The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night as being used in catamite brothels.

Allowing a thin stream to drizzle on Stamford’s hole, I licked my lips. As if his posterior did not look delectable enough, the cocoanut oil would now impart a certain savoir faire to the tang of his arse. My tongue slid eagerly between his cheeks and found its target as Stamford mewled with delight. Throwing his head back, he muttered incomprehensible syllables. I had to grab my aching shaft and rub it a few times to relieve the sexual pressure as my nose and tongue dove forward. 

Stamford was ready. I was ready. There was nothing that could stop the union of our bodies. Mounting him like a creature in heat, I slid the length of my cock back and forth between his cheeks, building ever more anticipation before allowing what we both desperately wanted to take place. Stamford called my name, entreating me to fuck him. 

Even with this much readiness, this next part always took a bit of finesse and patience. I placed my erection against Stamford’s hole, pouring a copious dollop of oil on it. When I felt Stamford had relaxed the proper amount, I tipped my hips forward ever so slightly. As the head slid into Stamford’s quivering compartment, shockwaves of pleasure undulated through my body. Stamford no doubt felt the same, as his breath quickened and his eyes widened. He kissed me deeply and requested that I please continue. With slow and careful movements, I slipped farther and farther inside him, eventually bringing the base of my dick against his buttocks. 

Stamford reached back and pressed a hand onto my rear to push me deeper inside, moaning in uncontrolled joy. I hoped that no nosy neighbors were listening in on our rutting session but by now was too far committed to do anything about it. Holding Stamford against me, I gently sank into his body, enjoying the passion of our bond. Sweat dripped down my face as I pulled back again, looking down the fur of my chest and stomach to Stamford’s arse and my personal article lodged within. Gently, I began to ride him.

Soon, we were rollicking, my shaft plunging in and out of his depths, both of us shouting in ecstasy. His body was unbelievable, taut and elastic at the same time. Once he was opened up, we switched to a position Stamford enjoyed even more; he on his back as I faced him, his legs spread like an insatiable queen. Each thrust now hit that special spot inside him, the prostate gland we’d seen so many times in medical drawings, giggling and aroused at the same time. 

My hand wrapped around his dick, taking occasional pauses to re-lubricate, we continued in this manner as if lost in a shared trance. Each movement forward brought forth a wellspring of bliss, the reverse course similarly sending out enchanting rushes. I was lost. Lost within my body, within Stamford’s arse, within the two of us connected in love. Shudders passed through Stamford as I persisted with my pleasurable invasion. It was clear he could stand it no longer.

Clenching spasms wracked his physique as he fired a cannonade of cum. The vision of it shooting over his head, coupled with the sensation of his puckering hole, sent me over the ledge as well. With an almost lupine howl, I expelled my offering into Stamford’s twitching aperture. Drained, I collapsed down into his awaiting arms. Satiated men, we both fell promptly asleep.

When I awoke, the two of us lay naked next to one another on the bed. Stamford was looking at me in an exultant daze, cheerily smirking. His fingers ran gently through the fleece of my belly. 

“You are just as good as I recall,” he said with satisfaction. 

“As are you, my friend.” 

I leaned forward for a kiss. But Stamford pulled back, his eyes reprimanding me. It helped me remember myself and the society I lived in. I might feel passionately about Stamford at the moment, but decency and decorum would not allow our emotions to exist outside this bedroom. We both shifted uncomfortably for a moment and I cleared my throat. 

“Tell me more about this Mr. Holmes,” I said, my thoughts straying once again back to lodgings and money. “He is a medical student, I suppose?”

“No—I have no idea what he does to be honest. He is certainly well up on his anatomy, and he is a first-class chemist. But as far as I know he has never taken out any systematic classes. His studies are very desultory and eccentric, but he has amassed a lot of out-of-the way knowledge which would astonish anyone.”

“So you never asked him what he went out for?”

“No,” said Stamford, frowning. “He is not an easy man to draw out, even for those he is physical with. But he can be communicative when the fancy seizes him.”

“I should like to meet him,” I said. Stamford fixed me with a serious gaze, as if to ask whether or not I intended to sleep with this Holmes character. “It’s not like that. If I am to lodge with anyone, I would prefer a man of quiet and studious habits. How can I meet this friend of yours?”

“He is sure to be at his laboratory,” returned my companion. “He either avoids the place for weeks, or else works there from morning to night. If you like, we shall drive round together after supper.”

“Certainly,” I answered, and the conversation drifted away toward other channels. 

Later, as we made our way to the laboratory, Stamford gave me a few more particulars about the gentleman whom I proposed to take as a fellow-lodger.

“You mustn’t blame me if you don’t get on with him,” he said. “I know nothing more of him than I have learned from our few brief… encounters. You proposed this arrangement, so you must not hold me responsible.”

“If we don’t get on it will be easy to part company,” I answered. “It seems to me Stamford,” I added, looking hard at him, “that you have some reason for not wanting me to meet with this man. Are you afraid that I will come between you?”

Stamford laughed. “It is not that, John,” he said. “Holmes is a little too scientific for my tastes—it approaches cold-bloodedness. But it is also that he is not a man who can be contained by another individual. He follows his own whims and desires and apparently has quite a fruitful time of it.”

That sounded not unlike my own proclivities. After all, the world was filled with beautiful and erotically-charged men; even Stamford knew that I would never settle for a single person. ‘To have and to hold till death do us part’—as the mundane couples put it in their vows—would not suit me.

As we spoke, Stamford showed me down a narrow lane and passed through a small side door, which opened to a great wing of the hospital. It was familiar ground to me, and I needed no guiding as we ascended the bleak stone staircase and made our way down the long corridor with its vista of whitewashed wall and dun-coloured doors. Near the end a low arched passage branched away from it, and led to the chemical laboratory.

This was a lofty chamber, lined and littered with countless bottles. Broad, low tables were scattered about, which bristled with retorts, test-tubes, and little Bunsen lamps, with their blue flickering flames. There was only one student in the room, who was bent over a distant table absorbed in his work. At the sound of our steps, he glanced round and sprang to his feet with a cry of pleasure. “I’ve found it! I’ve found it!” he shouted to my companion. “I have found a re-agent that is capable of cleaning up the stains and leaving behind no trace.” Had he discovered a gold mine, greater delight could not have shone upon his features. 

“Dr. Watson, Sherlock Holmes,” said Stamford, introducing us. 

“How are you?” he said cordially, gripping my hand with a strength for which I should hardly have given him credit. “You won’t mind if I borrow some of this?”

Before I could react, Holmes had stuck his hand down the front of my trousers, inside my underwear, and gently dabbed the end of my (now flaccid) penis. I nearly jumped back in surprise but the man swiftly removed his arm, a sheen of something on his finger. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.

Holmes paid me no mind, spreading the sticky substance on his finger upon the lapel of my coat. I realized that it was a spot of post ejaculatory fluid that had seeped from my ducts following my escapades with Stamford. With a mixture of disgust and shock, I looked at the visible streak and asked Holmes why he had soiled my clothing. 

“Ah, Dr. Watson,” he said. “To show you my latest creation.” He took a small atomizer and directed its spray to the spot on my coat. Within seconds, the fluid disappeared. 

Despite being upset, I was duly impressed. This mixture, whatever it was, would have probably come in handy at many times in my life. “What have you done?” I asked. 

Holmes held up the atomizer proudly. “It is a cleaning spray capable of instantly dissolving semen and other ejaculates and leaving no trace. Are you a high-society man looking to hide your torrid affair with the gardener without alerting your washerwoman? With Sherlock Holmes’ patented creation, now you can.”

His eyes fairly glittered as he spoke, and he put his hand over his heart and bowed as if to some applauding crowd in his imagination. 

“You are to be congratulated,” I remarked, considerably surprised by his enthusiasm. I picked at the spot where the fluid had been and found it completely clean. “Though next time, I would prefer if you gave me some notice beforehand.”

Holmes ignored my remark. “There was the case of Lord Gremely’s embarrassment last year. And the ambassador Von Bischoff more recently. Bradford was caught with Muller just last month, the story of which nearly reached the news. And all those cases could have been avoided with this.” 

“You seem to be a walking calendar of men’s proclivities,” I said. “You should start a paper on those lines. Call it ‘Sexual Gossip of Yesteryear.’”

Holmes didn’t seem to care for my tone, whereas I didn’t care for his scandalmongering. It was Stamford who saved the situation. 

“We came here on business,” he said, sitting down on a three legged stool, and pushing another one in the direction of my foot. “My friend here want to take diggings, and as you were just complaining that you could get no one to go halves with you, I thought I might bring you together.”

Sherlock Holmes seemed delighted at the idea of sharing rooms with me. “I have my eye on a suite in Baker Street,” he said. “Which would suit us down to the ground. You don’t mind if I smell of strong tobacco, I hope?”

I made myself comfortable on the seat. “In fact, I always smoke ‘ships’ myself,” I said. 

“And marihuana?” Holmes asked. 

I had partaken in marihuana leaves during my time in the Orient. I found it had a soothing smoke and greatly enhanced late-night encounters. Perhaps Holmes and I were more suited that I suspected. 

“I generally leave chemicals around,” he said. “And occasionally do experiments. Would that annoy you?”

“By no means.”

“Let me see—what are my other shortcoming. I get in the dumps sometimes, and don’t open my mouth for days. You must not think I am sulky when I do that. Just let me alone, and soon I’ll be alright. What have you to confess now? It’s just as well for two fellows to know the worst of one another before they begin to live together.”

I laughed at his cross-examination. “I keep to myself as well,” I said. “And I get up at all sorts of ungodly hours, and I am extremely lazy. I have another set of vices as well, but those are the principal ones at present.”

Holmes looked down his aquiline nose at me. “Now, Dr. Watson, even if you hadn’t arrived here with our dear friend Stamford, it would have been easy for me to surmise your predilections. Your physique is like that of a French Bulldog, your authentic swagger suggests that the item between your legs is impressive. In pursuits, you prefer to take on the role of hunter. In bed, you would rather give than receive. Your greatly enjoy the feeling of a tongue pressed to the sensitive spot directly behind your testicles. And I suspect that you have been with approximately thirteen men these last two months.”

He was exactly right. I stammered. “How could you know all that?”

Holmes pursed his lips and looked askance. “It is simply something I am able to figure out.” He smiled. “But no matter. I am of the same temperament as you when it comes to men, Dr. Watson. And I have no problem if you bring one home as often as you like, if you would not begrudge me the same courtesy.”

“Of course not,” I said. 

“But you must understand, I do not mix my recreational activities with either my friends nor my flat-mates. You and I will not be sleeping together. That is a firm rule.”

I nearly sneered at him. As if I was even interested in him bodily, considering the way he was acting. But I was desperate for a lodgings and readily agreed to his conditions. 

“Right then,” said Holmes, with a merry laugh. “I think we may consider things settled—that is, if the rooms are agreeable to you.”

“When shall we see them?”

“Come meet me tomorrow at noon at No. 221B Baker Street, and we’ll settle everything.”

“At noon exactly,” I said, shaking his hand. 

We left him at work with his chemicals, and walked toward my hotel. 

“By the way,” I said, stopping suddenly and turning to Stamford. “How the deuce did he know that I slept with thirteen men in the last two months?”

My companion smiled an enigmatic smile. “That’s just his specialty,” he said. “A good many people have wanted to know how he finds things out.”

“A mystery is it?” I chortled. “That is quite piquant, then. But I suppose that the proper study of one man is another man, as you know.”

“You must study him then,” Stamford said, and then bade me goodbye. “You’ll find him a knotty problem, though.”

**Chapter II: The science of sexual deduction**

The next day, just as we had arranged, I arrived at No. 221 Baker Street, and found apartment B. From the outside, I could see that the space had two broad windows facing a sitting room, though a white curtain blocked my view indoors. As I approached the knocker, I heard a great deal of commotion coming from inside. There was the repeated sound of someone banging on the floor coupled with snorts and shouts. 

Thinking something might be amiss, I quickly opened the unlocked door and found Holmes entirely nude, thrusting himself into a young companion on the floor of the living room. This display of naked fornication in broad daylight was almost more than I could handle, though the two men took hardly any notice of me as I entered. 

I saw Holmes, his tall and well-built frame, his muscles bulging like Vitruvian Man. His eyes were sharp and piercing, watching the sweat-covered back of the man beneath him. His hair was wild, in a passionate disarray. The fur on his body was light but noticeable, curving around his nipples, pooling on his chest, and trailing down to his sex, where a rough tangle of hair sprouted at the base of his cock and covered his balls in a fine down. His companion appeared to be in his early twenties, with inky hair and icy eyes. He looked up at me with a flirtatious smile, clearly enjoying the show they were giving me. 

But by far the most spectacular thing in the room was Holmes’ cock. Large and throbbing, it was greater than any member I had ever come across. Holmes continually buried it in the other man’s arse, his eyes rolling to the back of his head as he moaned. He would pull it out, enormous and glistening, only to thrust its unimaginable dimensions back inside again. The dark-haired man on the floor appeared to be in heaven as he took the assault with ease. “Oui, oui,” he cried each time Holmes pushed in. 

Finally, Holmes gave a loud shout and came, his body shivering. He reached around to grab the other man’s hard dick, pumping it a few times until the man shuddered and ejaculated, a white puddle amassing on the floor beneath him. 

Holmes shut his eyes for a moment and then looked up, seeing me for the first time. 

“Is it noon already?” he said indifferently. 

He got up, a loud plopping sound emerging at the same time as his colossal implement. The dark-haired man collapsed to the ground, completely spent. Holmes stood and wrapped a smoking jacket around his body, though he neglected to sash it shut. He strode to the kitchen, his front side resembling the display of a Viennese sausage shop. 

I followed Holmes, bewildered. The man on the floor seemed to be resting, exhausted from the frenetic activity. Holmes reached into a cupboard, pulled out a bottle, and removed the cork. 

“Vin Mariani?” he offered. I told him I thought it was a bit early for wine. “Nonsense,” said Holmes. “A cup of this is more stimulating that tea.”

“Who is that man?” I said, pointing at the bare arse in the living room. 

Holmes shrugged. “A French aristocrat’s son. Jean-Pierre, I believe. He asked me to help him find a suitable hotel for a man of his tastes while in England. We came to a mutually beneficial agreement regarding his price.”

“Is this something that will happen frequently if we are to live together?” I asked, annoyance in the edge of my voice. Though I have enjoyed my fair share men, above all else I am a Victorian gentleman, and prudence was my main operational mode. This open display of carnality was beyond anything I had heretofore experienced.

“If you like, I can keep such things confined to my bedroom,” he said. “Though I take it you had some enjoyment from watching us.” 

He pointed at my crotch, where the outline of my rock hard equipment was visible through my trousers. Flummoxed, I did my best to cover it up. I took a swig from the offered glass. “Listen, Holmes. I am as libertine as the next man but I was not expecting to find you like this.”

Holmes eyed me. “And I was not expecting you for at least five more minutes,” he said. “But I assure you I will keep such things in my trousers for the time being so as not to upset your sensibilities.

I wondered if perhaps I should try to find more suitable lodgings. 

Holmes downed his glass and perked up. “Would you like to tour the place?” he asked. “Or perhaps you would like to relieve some tension with Jean-Pierre?” He smiled wickedly. “He is a young rooster and if you give him a few minutes, I’m sure he would be ready to go again.”

I elected for the former. Holmes showed me to my bedroom, which was comfortable. The kitchen was small but would serve our needs and the living room was airy and, even with a naked man sprawled out on the floor, cheerfully furnished. Jean-Pierre stirred as we entered, rising slowly. He grinned as I attempted to look away from his limp organ and made no attempt to hide his nakedness. He sprawled out on a plump sofa, the hair at his crotch as dark as that on his head. 

“Zis eez your ozer lover?” he asked Holmes. 

Holmes raised an eyebrow at me. “No.”

“Zen what eez he?”

“I am hoping he will be my flat-mate,” he said, reaching out to shake my hand.

I looked around at the apartment, which was desirable in almost every way. The terms that Holmes had given for the rent were quite moderate as well. And it would be nice to lodge with someone from whom I would have no need to hide my interest in men. Holmes might be a bit eccentric but there was also something interesting about him. Perhaps I could learn a few things. I took his hand and shook it, concluding our bargain on the spot.

That very evening I moved my things round from the hotel, and on the following morning Sherlock Holmes followed me with several boxes and portmanteaus. For a day or two we were busily employed in unpacking and laying out our property to the best advantage. That done, we gradually began to settle down and to accommodate ourselves to our new surroundings.

Holmes was certainly not a difficult man to live with. He was quiet in his ways, and his habits were regular. Unless he was with a companion, it was rare for him to be up after ten at night, and he had invariably breakfasted and gone out before I rose in the morning. Sometimes, he spent his days at the chemical laboratory, sometimes on long walks, which appeared to take him into the lowest portions of the City. Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him; but now and again a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting-room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night. On these occasions I have noticed such a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes, that I might have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some narcotic, though secretly I wondered if the drug that plagued his heart was love.

As the weeks went by, my interest in him and my curiosity as to his aims in life gradually deepened and increased. His very person and appearance were such as to strike the attention of the most casual observer. In height, he was rather over six feet and lean enough to appear taller. His eyes were penetrating and ever-watchful, save during those periods of torpor which I have earlier alluded to; and his hawk-like nose gave his whole expression and air of alertness and decision.

There were times when I would look at him and be glad for his rules about not mixing domestic and recreational activities together—Holmes was rather not the type of man I typically went for. His hands were invariably blotted with ink and stained with chemicals, yet he was possessed of extraordinary delicacy of touch, as I frequently had occasion to experience when he would run his fingers over my shoulders to get my attention.

The reader may set me down as a hopeless busybody, and my protestations of how little he attracted me physically merely a ruse. I confess that this man stimulated my curiosity, and often I endeavored to break through the reticence which he showed on all that concerned himself. Before pronouncing judgment, however, be it remembered how objectless my life, and how little there was to engage my attention. My health forbade me from venturing out unless the weather was exceptionally genial, and I had no friends (nor lovers) who would call upon me and break the monotony of my daily life. Under these circumstances, I eagerly hailed the little mystery which hung around my companion, and spent much time in endeavouring to unravel it.

He was not studying medicine. He had, himself, in reply to a question, confirmed Stamford’s opinion upon that point. Neither did he appear to have pursued any course of reading which might fit him for a degree in science or other recognized portal which would give him an entrance into the learned world. Yet his zeal for certain studies, chiefly men, was remarkable, and within eccentric limits his knowledge was so extraordinarily ample and minute that his observations have fairly astounded me. Surely no man would work so hard or attain such precise information about male behavior unless he had some definite end in view, beyond the obvious. 

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, politics, and philosophy, he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the most naïve way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.

“You appear to be astonished,” he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.”

“To forget it!”

“You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”

“But the Solar System!” I protested.

“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”

I was on the point of asking him what that work might be, but something in his manner showed me that the question would be an unwelcome one. I pondered over our short conversation, however, and endeavoured to draw my deductions from it. He said that he would acquire no knowledge which did not bear upon his object. Therefore all the knowledge which he possessed was such as would be useful to him. I enumerated in my own mind all the various points upon which he had shown me that he was exceptionally well-informed. I even took a pencil and jotted them down. I could not help smiling at the document when I had completed it. It ran in this way—

_SHERLOCK HOLMES—his limits._  
1\. Knowledge of Literature.—Nil.  
2\. Philosophy.—Nil.  
3\. Astronomy.—Nil.  
4\. Politics.—Feeble.  
5\. Botany.—Variable. Well up in marihuana, opium and other drugs. Knows nothing of practical gardening.  
6\. Male sexuality.—Practical, but limited. Claims to tell at a glance the desires of different gentlemen, though I sometimes suspect he is inventing things.  
7\. Chemistry.—Profound.  
8\. Anatomy.—Highly accurate to the point of unseemliness.  
9\. Sensational Literature.—Immense. He appears to know every detail of every scandalous encounter committed in the city of London and beyond.  
10\. Plays the violin well.  
11\. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.   
12\. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.

When I had got so far in my list I threw it into the fire in despair. “If I can only find what the fellow is driving at by reconciling all these accomplishments, and discovering a calling which needs them all,” I said to myself, “I may as well give up the attempt at once.”

I see that I have alluded above to his powers upon the violin. These were very remarkable, but as eccentric as all his other accomplishments. That he could play pieces, and difficult pieces, I knew well, because at my request he has played me some of Mendelssohn’s Lieder, and other favourites. When left to himself, however, he would seldom produce any music or attempt any recognized air. Leaning back in his arm-chair of an evening, he would close his eyes and scrape carelessly at the fiddle which was thrown across his knee. Sometimes the chords were sonorous and melancholy. Occasionally they were fantastic and cheerful. Clearly they reflected the thoughts which possessed him, but whether the music aided those thoughts, or whether the playing was simply the result of a whim or fancy was more than I could determine. I might have rebelled against these exasperating solos had it not been that he usually terminated them by playing in quick succession a whole series of my favourite airs as a slight compensation for the trial upon my patience.

At first, we rarely had callers, save a dark-eyed man who was introduced to me as a Mr. Lestrade. I understood that Holmes had no interest in him sexually, and neither did I. As to what he and Holmes were discussing all the time, I couldn’t say. 

Presently, I found that Holmes had other callers, and they were mostly from different classes of society. The French boy I did not see again. But Holmes returned once with a blond man, very fashionably dressed, who left behind a pair of lavender gloves. A seedy young Jew with brown curls stole a china saucer from the apartment. There was the Irish lad, too, who Holmes dragged into my room nude in the middle of the night to show me that the hair at his crotch was the same burnished orange as that on his head.

I would hear Holmes banging into them from the room next to mine. Exactly how he found so many men in London with such capacious arseholes was beyond me. I did my best to ignore it, thinking that I should be out finding a romp of my own. But still I listened, often bringing myself to completion with the sound of some man softly calling Holmes’ name. 

It was upon the 4th of March, as I have good reason to remember, that I rose somewhat earlier than usual, and found that Sherlock Holmes was still at his breakfast. I sat down to my own, picked up a magazine from the table and read it while my companion munched silently at his toast. One of the articles had a pencil mark at the heading, and naturally I began to run my eye through it. 

Its somewhat ambitious title was “A Case For Open Love” and it attempted to show that it should not be illegal for two men to have romantic relations. I was sure that the populace was scandalized by its case but I found myself drawn farther and farther in to its points. What bravery this person had to argue that the type of love I enjoyed with another man was not a wicked thing but in fact good and natural. Holmes inquired at what was making me grin so wide and so I began to read:

“A man with the Uranian urge is not shameful, but simply a human being and therefore has inalienable rights. His sexual orientation is a right established by nature. Legislators have no right to veto nature; no right to persecute nature in the course of its work; no right to harm living creatures who are subject to those drives nature gave them.”

“What is it?” asked Sherlock Holmes. 

“Why this article,” I said, pointing at it with my egg spoon. “I see that you have read it because you have marked it. It is amazingly well written but there is no way that it can change anything about our society.”

“Why not?” demanded Holmes. 

“Because in our delicate era such ideas would not find themselves very welcome. You and I both know that firsthand. It will be completely ridiculed and ignored.”

“That may be,” said Holmes. “But at the very least it will put the idea out there and then perhaps things can start to change.”

I shook my head. “Perhaps. Though the person who wrote it would be best to keep their mouth shut in public.”

“Why Watson, you know that I am the very model of discretion when it comes to matters like this.”

I gaped at his audacity. “This is your article?”

“I used a pseudonym: Mr. Peaslin.” His face betrayed how clever he thought he was. “But I feel it could help people better understand the world that I and many others live in. It is a part of my work, after all.”

“And what precisely is your line of work?” This was a point that had troubled me until now.

“Well, I have a trade of my own. I suppose I am the only one in the world. I’m a sexual consulting detective, if you can understand what that is. Here in London we have many men who are looking to find other men to satisfy their proclivities. And since people of our persuasion must be inconspicuous, hiding what we do in the shadows, there is the penchant for misdeeds. I have always had a knack for spotting the cravings of other men, their likes and dislikes in bed. I enjoy applying my abilities toward interesting cases that might otherwise go unsolved.”

And gratifying your own desires in the process, I thought, though I didn’t utter this idea aloud. Instead, I said: “Do you mean to say that you can deduce the precise sexual desires of any man who you see on the street?” This was among the points in my list that I considered to fantastical to believe.

“Quite so. I have a kind of intuition that way. You appeared to be surprised when I told you, on our first meeting, that you had slept with thirteen men in the last two months.” 

“I assumed you were told by Stamford, though I don’t recall telling him myself.”

“Nothing of the sort. From a long train of thoughts that ran so swiftly through my mind, I arrived at the conclusions without being conscious of the intermediate steps. There were such steps, however. The train of reasoning ran: 

“Here is a gentleman of the medical type, burly, and with the air of a well-honed military man. Clearly, you are virile and enjoy taking charge. I knew that you and Stamford had enjoyed one another. But he was also still somewhat nervous around you, indicating that the two of you had just met once again after a long period of absence. You clearly seduced Stamford quickly and quite successfully. You enjoy sex, work swiftly, and will easily take your pick of men.”

I was impressed. “But you still didn’t tell me how you knew it was thirteen.”

“It was obvious to me from the beginning that the two of us are quite similar in character. That was the same number of men I had taken to bed during that span.”

“It is simple enough as you explain it,” I said, smiling. “You remind me of Edgar Allen Poe’s Dupin. I had no idea that such individuals did exist outside of stories.”

Sherlock Holmes rose and lit his pipe. “No doubt you think that you are complimenting me in comparing me to Dupin,” he observed. “Now, in my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow. That trick of his of breaking in on his friends’ thoughts with an apropos remark after a quarter of an hour’s silence is really very showy and superficial. He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine.”

I walked over to the window, and stood looking out into the busy street. “This fellow may be very clever,” I said to myself, “but he is certainly very conceited.” Annoyed at his bumptious style of conversation, I thought it best to change the topic.

“I wonder what that fellow is looking for?” I asked, pointing to a stalwart, plainly-dressed individual who was walking slowly down the other side of the street, looking anxiously at the numbers. He had a large blue envelope in his hand, and was evidently the bearer of a message.

“You mean the man who enjoys having his toes sucked while being penetrated?” said Sherlock Holmes.

“Brag and bounce!” thought I to myself. “He knows that I cannot verify his guess.”

The thought had hardly passed through my mind when the man whom we were watching caught sight of the number on our door, and ran rapidly across the roadway. We heard a loud knock, a deep voice below, and heavy steps ascending the stair.

“For Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” he said, stepping into the room and handing my friend the letter.

The question on the tip of my tongue was too embarrassing to say out loud. I merely stared at the man, perhaps too leeringly, for he gave me a perplexed look as he left. 

Holmes read the contents and told me it was a note from Lestrade. He asked us to come to number 3, Lauriston Gardens, off the Brixton Road. 

“What does he want you there for?” I asked Holmes. 

“Lestrade sometimes consults with me. A man of my talents can come in handy.”

**Chapter III: The Lauriston Garden Mystery**

We took a hansom to Brixton Road. It was a foggy, cloudy morning, and a dun-coloured veil hung over the house-tops, looking like the reflection of the mud-coloured streets beneath. My companion was in the best of spirits, prattling on about Cremona fiddles, and the difference between a Stradivarius and an Amati. 

We arrived at Lauriston Gardens Number 3. The whole place was very sloppy from the rain which had fallen through the night. The garden was bounded by a three-foot brick wall with a fringe of wood rails upon the top, and against this wall was leaning a stalwart police constable, surrounded by a small knot of loafers, who craned their necks and strained their eyes in the vain hope of catching some glimpse of the proceedings within.

I had imagined that Sherlock Holmes would at once have hurried into the house and plunged into a study of the mystery. Nothing appeared to be further from his intention. With an air of nonchalance which, under the circumstances, seemed to me to border upon affectation, he lounged up and down the pavement, and gazed vacantly at the ground, the sky, the opposite houses and the line of railings. Having finished his scrutiny, he proceeded down the path, or rather down the finger of grass which flanked the path, keeping his eyes riveted upon the ground. He then looked up to an open window on the second floor, white curtains flying in the breeze.

Twice during his scrutiny, he stopped, and once I saw him smile, and heard him utter and exclamation of satisfaction. There were many marks of footsteps upon the wet clayey soil, but since the police had been coming and going over it, I was unable to see how my companion could hope to learn anything from it. Still, I had such extraordinary evidence of the quickness of his perceptive faculties, that I had no doubt that he could see a great deal which was hidden from me. 

At the door, we were met by a tall, white-faced, light-haired man, with a notebook in his hand, who rushed forward and wrung my companion’s hand with effusion. A momentary glance between Mr. Holmes and the detective made me suspect that they knew each other both professionally and Biblically, but I could not say for certain. After all, I am not a consulting sexual detective. 

“It is indeed kind of you to come,” said the man. “I have left everything untouched.”

“Except that!” my friend answered, pointing at the pathway. “If a herd of buffaloes had passed along there could not be a greater mess. No doubt, however, you had drawn your own conclusions, Gregson, before you permitted this.”

“I had much to do inside in the house,” the detective answered evasively. “My colleague, Mr. Lestrade, is here. I had relied upon him to look after this.”

Holmes glanced at me and raised his eyebrow sardonically. “With two such men as yourself and Lestrade upon the ground, there will not be much for a third party to find out,” he said. 

Gregson rubbed his hands in a self-satisfied way. “I think we have done all that can be done,” he said. “It’s a queer case, though, and I knew your taste for such things.”

Gregson led us inside the house, a clean and officious place. A short passage from the entrance opened into a living room. I took note there of a classical bust placed upon a mantelpiece of imitation white marble, a depiction of the priapic Hermes. It was a vulgar item, though its sexual display was easily ignored by upper society men and women, who simply considered it a classical statue. A framed painting of Zeus absconding with Ganymede was another subtlety signaling hidden depths to men of my variety. 

Holmes and I were led up a staircase to a bedroom, where the mysterious affair had occurred. In it stood a fretful man, about forty-three or forty-four years of age, middle-sized, broad-shouldered, with crisp curling black hair, running to silver at the sides, and a short stubbly beard. He was dressed in a heavy broadcloth frock coat and waistcoat, with light coloured trousers, and immaculate colour and cuffs. A top hat, well brushed and trim, was placed upon his head. He nodded curtly at Holmes and I as we walked in. Lestrade, lean and ferret-like as ever, stood by the doorway, and greeted my companion and myself.

“Mr. Holmes, Mr. Watson,” said Gregson, “This is Enoch Drebber.”

Mr. Drebber eyed my companion and I with suspicion. “What is their business here?”

“We have come about the robbery,” said Holmes. 

Gregson sputtered. “I haven’t told you anything about the case. How in the deuce did you know that we were looking for a robber?”

Holmes puffed his lips. “That there has been a break-in is obvious. Or, at least, that is what it appears to be.”

Mr. Drebber appeared confounded, and he glared hard at my companion. “My wife’s ruby ring,” he said. “It is an extremely valuable item, and it has gone missing following our recent holiday.”

Holmes did not seem to be listening to the man, running his nimble fingers wildly over the dresser in the room, as well as here, there, and everywhere. During his examination, my companion wore the same far-away expression which I had remarked upon before. So swiftly did Holmes move that none of the assembled persons had any time to react to the rudeness of the intrusion.

“It certainly has,” said Holmes, and then seemed to move on to another subject. “And your secretary—a certain Joseph Strangerson, do you currently know his whereabouts?”

Drebber turned red as an onion at the name of his secretary. 

“What would Strangerson have to do with this?” he blubbered. “And how did you know his name?”

Holmes had whipped a tape measure from his pocket and was trotting noiselessly about the room, sometimes stopping, occasionally, kneeling, and once lying flat on his face. So engrossed was he with his occupation that he appeared to have forgotten our presence, for he chattered away to himself under his breath the whole time, keeping up a running fire of exclamations, whistles, groans, and little cries of suggestive encouragement and of hope. As I watched him I was irresistibly reminded of a pure-blooded well-trained fox-hound as it dashes backwards and forwards through the covert, whining in its eagerness, until it comes across the lost scent. For twenty minutes or more he continued his researches, measuring with the most exact care the distance between marks which were entirely invisible to me. In one place he gathered up very carefully a little pile of grey dust from the floor, and packed it away in an envelope.

Finally, he jumped up and produced several items that had apparently been the fruits of his search, listing each one as he handed them around. 

“A gold watch, No. 97163, by Barraud, of London. Gold pin—bull-dog’s head, with rubies as eyes. Russian leather card case, with the cards of Enoch J. Drebber of Cleveland.”

Drebber seemed unimpressed with this performance. “Yes, those are all my things.”

I took note of the fact that Mr. Drebber’s personal items had been scattered about the room, perhaps in some haste, and that they described a man of flair, a bit flamboyant with his tastes. 

Holmes continued. “A pocket edition of Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron,’ with name of Joseph Strangerson upon the fly-leaf. And a letter addressed to Strangerson, referring to the sailing of a boat from Liverpool. It is clear that this man was about to return to New York.”

Gregson eyed Mr. Drebber about this piece of information. “It that true? Was your secretary here recently?”

But Drebber did not appear to know what my companion was talking about. “I haven’t seen Strangerson in some time. He has nothing to do with this case.”

It was obvious the man was lying, but Holmes paid the statement no heed. He casually stretched his arms above his head, pulling the bottom of his waistcoat upward. The towering bulge of his crotch was evident, and the coiled outline of the gift the Lord gave him pressed luridly against the fabric. Holmes scratched at his member nonchalantly, but I saw how his eyes watched Drebber, whose gaze was magnetically drawn downward. In fact, no man in the room could fail to be impressed and even Gregson had trouble averting his eyes from Holmes’ obscenity. 

As if to save himself the embarrassment, Gregson busied himself with Strangerson’s letter, flipping the paper over. On the back in a charcoal pen was written the word ‘Rache.’

“That’s strange,” he said. “It appears that someone was trying to write the name ‘Rachel’ here on the back, but stopped. Is that your wife’s name, Mr. Drebber?”

Drebber’s attention snapped away from Holmes’ crotch. “My wife’s name is Muriel, detective. I have no idea who Rachel might be.”

“It might not be a name. ‘Rache’ is also the German word for ‘revenge,’” I interjected, trying to helpful. 

Holmes studied us all. “And it can refer to a type of Medieval hunting-dog, once commonly found here in Britain. Perhaps one of you has heard of a club with the same name, over by Cleveland Street?”

A flicker of recognition passed over Drebber’s face. But he buried the expression. Instead, his eyes fell once again to Holmes’ crotch and he swallowed, as if salivating too much. 

“What were you and Strangerson doing the last time you saw one another?” Holmes asked. He now brought himself quite close to Drebber, locking eyes with the older man.

“Who knows?” said Drebber, agitated but unable to turn away. “Paperwork most likely. We had recently traveled in the Continent together. Why the devil are you so fixated on him?”

“Mr. Lestrade; Mr. Gregson, would you excuse us for a moment?” Holmes asked, quite politely. 

Though guileless Gregson seemed to find this an easy enough request, the look on Lestrade’s face indicated that he didn’t entirely like where this situation was going. But he acquiesced and left myself, Drebber, and Holmes alone. 

“Now, Mr. Drebber,” said Holmes. “At what point did you and your secretary first become lovers?”

The skin around Drebber’s collar turned crimson as he glowered fiercely at my companion. “What kind of a terrible insinuation is that? As I have previously stated, I am a happily married man.”

“I don’t recall you using the word ‘happily’ at any point,” said Holmes with a casual air. 

Ruffled and uncomfortable, Drebber began to puff. “I would ask you to please take your accusations elsewhere. Simply because a man isn’t happily married does not mean that he undertakes the gross indecencies to which you refer.”

Holmes stood right next to me and, at that moment, leaned over to whisper in my ear, “I hope you won’t mind if I borrow this.”

No sooner had he said these words than he unbuttoned the fly of my trousers and pulled out my cock and balls. I was too shocked to do anything but stare as my member draped indecorously over my hairy pouch, the rest of my body fully clothed. 

“Are you saying, Mr. Drebber, that you gave no interest in something like this?” Holmes said, retaining a comfortable grip around my shaft.

Even soft, I must admit my tool was an appealing prize, dangling down toward the floor as it stiffened. Drebber was scandalized yet entranced by my thickening dick. As if it were a treat presented to a dog, Holmes grasped my sausage and shook it enticingly. 

“I… well…” Drebber seemed at a loss for words, hypnotized by the sight before him.

“Go ahead,” Holmes said in a deep and commanding voice.

Drebber stumbled forward, fell to his knees, and parted his mouth like he was partaking in a sacrament. The head of my cock came to rest on his tongue, causing an electric thrill to run through my spine. He closed his eyes, as if tasting the sweetest fruit plucked from the most tantalizing tree.

“Yes, that’s very good,” Holmes said encouragingly. He placed his hand in Drebber’s curls and bade him forward on my member. Drebber complied, taking more of my halfway-hard reward into his mouth. He sucked on it gently, inflating me further. 

I suppose I should not have submitted so easily and allowed Holmes to use my instrument as a transactional tool in his case. But you must understand that it had been some time since a pair of fine lips had become wrapped around my cockhead. Drebber, with his avuncular handsomeness, was not a terrible way to break this virginal fast. 

Holmes watched this action with lust and slid up beside me, placing one arm around my shoulder. With his other hand, he undid his own trousers, releasing the soft form of his monstrous entity. “You rather enjoy sucking large members, don’t you, Drebber?” he said. 

It seemed that no bigger prize—both figuratively and literally—could have pleased Drebber more. Leaving my growing erection aside, he shifted to face Holmes, pressing his face into that incredible creation. He seemed to drink deeply of Holmes’ dick, and immediately become inebriated. Rubbing his bearded cheeks over its unending length, he looked like a creature at play. Eventually, he leaned down to accept the enormous head into his mouth, an ecstatic shiver running through his entire body.

At this point, I looked over at Holmes, the two of us caught in a strange embrace. Such a situation seemed to be a breach in the rulebook he laid down on our first day together. At the same time, I was in no position to complain, enjoying the sight of this man engaged in Holmes’ engorging member. Perhaps we could bend the rules ever so slightly for occasions like these.

Soon Drebber was working assiduously on both our stiffened instruments, moving back and forth between each one like a drunk man. He tried to fit as much of our proportions into his throat as he could with each pass, doing a rather commendable job of it. In similar circumstances in the past—a male lover beside me as a second one knelt at my crotch—I would be kissing the nearer companion. And so, I leaned toward Holmes now, parting my lips for an embrace. 

Holmes brought a shushing finger to my mouth. “Now, Watson, you recall what we’ve discussed. The two of us will be doing nothing of that sort.”

Momentarily stunned, I tried to make sense of his system. But my body was rather aflame, Drebber’s lips now sliding past the midway point of my shaft, and rational thought somewhat beyond me. Holmes took the opportunity to leave me and sidle up behind Drebber, who was on all fours on the floor. Carefully, he undid Drebber’s belt and removed his trousers and underpants. Like two rounded hillocks, his naked arse stood out, covered in small black curls. The tuft of his bullocks peeked from between his parted legs, which were thick as tree trunks. Below, I could see his plump cock, dripping pre-ejaculatory fluid at a remarkable rate. Drebber seemed to be in a state of frenzied anticipation, more aroused than I had seen any man in some time.

Holmes placed his wet tool in Drebber’s crack and rubbed lasciviously. This seemed to drive Drebber into an even higher realm of ecstasy, and he moaned delightedly. Though with my girth still firmly lodged in his throat, and moving ever deeper, he was unable to produce much more than an excited whimper. The three of us were now positioned like a drawbridge—Holmes and I on either side with our pants around our ankles and Drebber as the span between us. 

Holmes met my eyes with a look that said, “Not a bad state of affairs, eh chum?” And I had to admit that if this was life with Sherlock Holmes, I would probably be willing to put up with a few strange rules. Drebber had now encapsulated a greater portion of my dick than most men could manage, his oral skills clearly among his greatest assets. That Holmes had managed to recognize this a priori was impressive to say the least. Relishing the warm wet feeling on my pole, I threw my head back in sublime gratification, slipping my hands beneath my shirt to caress my body and hardened nipples. 

From a pocket in his coat, Holmes produced a small flask containing oil. He rubbed some on Drebber’s hole, carefully inserting a digit. Drebber’s willingness at this point was evident. But Holmes seemed to want to tease the man just a bit more. He knelt down like an lion at a savannah watering-hole and began to play his tongue over Drebber’s pucker. 

Holmes licked Drebber, reaching down to smear precum on his shaft and stroke it. The stimulation sent Drebber into fits, driving his mouth all the way to the base of my cock. The sensation was celestial and I couldn’t help but pump my hips ever so slightly, though I wasn’t sure Drebber could handle such an incursion into his gullet. He took it like a champion, pulling himself most of the way off and then plunging back to fully envelop my rod. 

At this moment, Holmes spoke up between his tongue lashes. “Mr. Drebber, I know how much you enjoy the feeling of a large cock in your mouth while another man bucks you from behind. Wouldn’t you like that right now?”

Drebber, joyous tears streaming down his face, nodded while orally retaining my apparatus. 

“But for that to happen, Mr. Drebber, you will need to give me the information I require.”

Drebber cried out affirmative sounds, as if to say: “Yes, anything. Simply continue this astonishing pleasure.”

“Excellent. Now would you say that that you and your former secretary, Strangerson, were quite recently at the club called ‘Rache’?”

Annoyed at being interrupted from the plaything at his face, Drebber pulled off me and turned to Holmes. “Yes!” he cried. “That’s where he met his damn fool of a lover who has my wife’s ring!”

“And do you know this man’s name or what he looked like?”

“Of course not! I’ve never seen hide nor hair of his—OOOOOHH!!”

This final exclamation came in response to Holmes decisively slipping his cockhead into Drebber’s awaiting pucker. With his hands firmly grasping Drebber’s hips, a look of concentration and determination glued to his face, Holmes began a slow descent downward. Inch after inch of his marvel disappeared, gliding into Drebber with surprising ease. I watched the action, aroused beyond any measure, which seemed to take an inordinate amount of time. 

Finally, Holmes reached his hilt—his balls, which were the size and colour of Spanish carombola, coming to rest against Drebber’s arse. Though I might have expected some pain from Holmes’ gargantuan organ, the expression on Drebber’s face indicated the procedure had been delightful, his eyes rolling back and a beaming grin spreading across his lips. He turned once again to the piece in front of him, sliding my member deep into his mouth. For a moment, Holmes and I simultaneously stuffed him; Holmes corking him from the back while my projection stoppered his fore-end. 

Sherlock Holmes began a slow and steady stroke, his ridiculously large member shifting like the piston of a departing train. While thrusting into Drebber’s opening, he removed the remainder of his clothing. My eyes drank in the sight of his nude, brawny frame and the woolly hair on his chest. He leaned forward and undid Drebber’s coat and shirt, which had become sweat-stained from exertion, and then twisted his head beneath Drebber’s thick and muscular body to lick his engorged, pink areolae. Drebber responded with an elated cry as Holmes took Drebber’s cock in hand once again and began to pump it.

At the same time, I looked at Drebber’s face, my considerable instrument in his mouth and hairy satchel resting up against his chin. Our eyes met and he gave the briefest of nods, assenting to the minute movements I began to make with my hips. Warmth spread through my groin, elation fanning out into my body. This was sensational in every sense of the word. The three of us were a well-oiled sexual machine producing pleasure at treble the normal rate. Our actions felt primal, animalistic, and exceedingly masculine; for what better study of a man’s body than another man?

We continued in this manner for some time, and I enjoyed being both observer and participant in our revelry—watching Holmes expertly lunge his colossal grandeur into Drebber’s enthusiastic slot while my own implement slid between his heavenly lips. Soon, I could feel the tightening of my testes that indicated the impending critical period. The other two men must have begun to feel the same, as their breath quickened and passionate exclamations increased. Holmes grasped Drebber’s torso and dove into him with greater force and urgency. Drebber trembled with excitement; the three of us grunting like a troop of baboons. 

Drebber finished first; unexpectedly as no one was stimulating his sex at that moment. Driven to orgasm by Holmes’ appendage alone, he shot an immense glob of thick white seminal fluid that painted the floor. Seeing this brought about my own flood of bliss, my muscles twitching as I expelled with a cry into Drebber’s willing maw. Holmes kept at it for a while longer, his pace quickening until he could no longer avoid release. He clamped his eyes and tossed his head at climax, producing so much cum that it inundated Drebber’s compartment and leaked out around the edges of his cock. 

For a moment, I must have gone comatose as the next thing I knew, Holmes was standing beside me, offering a washcloth. Drebber had curled up on the floor next to his white puddle, looking up at the two of us in kittenish exultation, his hand idly stroking his flaccid dick. He gibbered, telling us that had been the most unbelievable experience of his life. Holmes merely nodded, thanking him and saying he would be happy to oblige anytime. Without warning, he called in Lestrade and Gregson. 

Both men’s faces were stained with a deep, embarrassed red as they entered, having no doubt overheard our exertions with Drebber. Neither glanced at the stark-naked man on the floor, who seemed not to care much who saw him unclothed. Holmes buttoned his shirt without haste, though his lower half (and the immensity it contained) remained bare. I had to admit that I experienced no discomfort from the detectives’ presence either, and the informality of having the affair out in the open was relaxing. I could certainly get used to such an environment.

Lestrade’s dark look suggested that he had experienced similar circumstances in the past with Holmes, and he didn’t like them. He was desperately trying his best to suppress the ardor we had roused in him, though his rigid member was visible through his trousers. Gregson, too, had clearly been stirred, though he managed to address us while avoiding meeting our eyes.

“And what have you discovered Mr. Holmes?” he asked. 

Holmes smiled as he finished putting on his clothes. “My companion and I found Mr. Drebber quite the charming fellow. They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains. In which case, Drebber might be considered a luminary of our time.”

“But what do you think of the case, sir?” said Gregson, annoyed.

“It would be robbing you of the credit of the case if I was to presume to help you,” remarked my friend. “You are doing so well now that it would be a pity for anyone to interfere.” There was a world of sarcasm in his voice as he spoke. “If you will let me know how your investigations go,” he continued, “I shall be happy to give you any help I can.”

Lestrade stared hard at Holmes, and I wondered about the conflicting emotions within him; he seemed simultaneously furious at my companion’s aloofness and bitter that he had not been invited to our romp. 

“Come along, Doctor,” he said to me once I had finished dressing; “we shall go to the club called Rache to seek out further information—and perhaps a bit more entertainment.” Turning to Lestrade he said: “You and Gregson might wish to patronize the establishment yourselves sometime. It could help you with a difficult problem you both appear to be having.”

Brazenly, he touched the bump at Lestrade’s crotch, causing the detective to jump back flustered. 

“I’ll tell you one thing which may help you in the case,” he continued. “There was no robbery, simply the aftermath of two men trying hide a secret tryst in a house that doesn’t belong to them. I suspect you will encounter Strangerson and his Patent leather shoes soon. The other man is six feet high, in the prime of life, has small feet for his height, a florid face, wears coarse, square-toed boots and smokes a Trichinopoly cigar. He and Strangerson came here while Drebber and his wife were gone. These are only a few indications, but they may assist you.”

With which Parthian shot he walked away, leaving the two rivals open-mouthed behind him.

**Chapter IV: A trip to the club Rache**

It was one o’clock when we left No. 3, Lauriston Gardens. Sherlock Holmes hailed a cab and ordered the driver to take us to an address near the West End, in Fitzrovia, a part of the City I had yet to become much acquainted with. 

“You amaze me, Holmes,” said I, as we took our seats. “Surely you are not as sure as you pretend to be of all those particulars which you gave.”

“There’s no room for a mistake,” he answered. “The very first thing which I observed on arriving there was the proliferation of footprints in mud all over the grounds. Patent leather and Square-toes walked down the pathway together as friendly as possible—arm-in-arm, in all probability. When they got inside they walked up and down the room to the bed—or rather, Patent-leathers stood still while Square-toes disappeared for a while—“ for the sake of our driver, Holmes did not spell out exactly what the two men were doing—“I could read all that in the dust; the appearance of a robbery was made after the fact in an attempt to hide these actions.”

That seems simple enough,” said I; “but how about the other man’s height?”

“Why, the height of a man, in nine cases out of ten, can be told from the length of his stride. It is a simple calculation enough, though there is no use my boring you with figures. I had this fellow’s stride both on the clay outside and on the dust within. It was child’s play.”

“And his age?” I asked.

“Well, if a man can stride four and a-half feet without the smallest effort, he can’t be quite in the sere and yellow. That was the breadth of a puddle on the garden walk which he had evidently walked across. Patent-leather boots had gone round, and Square-toes had hopped over. There is no mystery about it at all. Is there anything else that puzzles you?”

“The Trichinopoly cigar,” I suggested.

“I gathered up some scattered ash from the floor. It was dark in colour and flakey—such an ash as is only made by a Trichinopoly. I have made a special study of cigar ashes—in fact, I have written a monograph upon the subject. I flatter myself that I can distinguish at a glance the ash of any known brand, either of cigar or of tobacco. It is just in such details that the skilled detective differs from the Gregson and Lestrade type.”

“And the florid face?” I asked.

“Ah, that was a more daring shot, though I have no doubt that I was right. You must not ask me that at the present state of the affair.”

I passed my hand over my brow. “My head is in a whirl,” I remarked; “the more one thinks of it the more mysterious it grows. Why were these two men taking such a risk in a house that doesn’t belong to them? Why did they feel the need to hide their affair with this elaborate charade? If robbery was not the men’s intention, they why is the wife’s ring still missing? I confess that I cannot see any possible way of reconciling all these facts.”

My companion smiled approvingly.

“You sum up the difficulties of the situation succinctly and well,” he said. “There is much that is still obscure, though I have quite made up my mind on the main facts. I’m not going to tell you much more of the case, Doctor. You know a conjuror gets no credit when once he has explained his trick, and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all.”

“I shall never do that,” I answered; “you have brought detection in this field as near an exact science as it ever will be brought in this world.”

My companion flushed up with pleasure at my words, and the earnest way in which I uttered them. I had already observed that he was as sensitive to flattery on the score of his art as any girl could be of her beauty. Desperately, I wished to speak to him more about what had transpired when I tried to kiss him during our time with Drebber. If nothing else, I wished to clarify our standing with one another. But I knew my questioning would be impudent—Holmes had articulated the rules and they seemed to be rather steadfast. Besides, it would not be practical to talk about such matters here in public.

Oblivious to my thoughts, Holmes watched out the window. “I’ve told you all I know myself now,” he said. “For the rest is mere surmise and conjecture. We have a good working basis, however, on which to start. We must hurry up, for I want to go to Halle’s concert to hear Norman Neruda this afternoon.”

This conversation had occurred while our cab had been threading its way through a long succession of dingy streets and dreary by-ways. In the dingiest and dreariest of them our driver suddenly came to a stand. As I previously mentioned, this area was new to me; though I noticed we were not far from our apartment on Baker Street. Holmes seemed intimately familiar with our surroundings, addressing our cabman on precisely where to pick us up in a few hours. The drive made a face as we disembarked; evidently he did not think this part of town decent. 

I’ll admit it was not an attractive locality. A narrow passage led us into a quadrangle paved with flags and lined by sordid dwellings. We picked our way among groups of drunks, and men giving furtive glances as they swiftly walked, until we came to Number 46, where hung a sign like that seen above a tavern, decorated with the woodcut of a short-nosed dog. The establishment’s name—“Rache”— was written on a small slip of brass on the door. 

Holmes gave a sequence of syncopated knocks that must have been a signal of some sort. After a moment, the door opened to a dark and warm waiting room, the air inside perfumed and musky. 

The woman who opened the door looked at my companion and smiled. “Ah, Mr. Hawthorne—it is always a pleasure to see you back here.”

My eyes met Holmes’, who gave a quick wink and addressed the woman like an old friend. “Hello, Bess. I trust business is well. I’ve brought a good friend to experience the wonders of your hall. This is Mr. Williams.” 

The woman bowed her head at the introduction. She was fortyish and wore a heavy coat over her fair frame, her raven-colored hair swept back tight. Giving me a secretive grin, she opened a second door into an even darker room. While my eyes adjusted to the low candlelight, Bess came to stand behind a small lectern placed in front of a lacey curtain. She removed her overcoat, revealing a scandalous kit—an ornate corset that cupped her breasts but left bare her entire arms and shoulders. 

“That will be one sovereign apiece,” she said, holding both Holmes and myself with a playful gaze. I had the sense that in her imagination we were performing outrageous acts. 

Holmes paid and she pulled aside the curtain to allow us in. As we passed, I was shocked to see that Bess wore nothing on her lower half, her bush displayed proudly for all to see. 

Flustered, I stammered: “What precisely is this establishment, Holmes?”

“Haven’t you guessed? We’ve entered Rache—the finest place in London for men such as ourselves.”

The room we came to was low-lit and smoke filled, redolent of tobacco and other heady smells. From somewhere through the haze came the sound of a player piano and a dull cacophony of voices. Though the space was shadowed, I could resolve a bar in the distance and scattered furnishings; comfortable-looking couches and divans. Draped upon them, turning their heads to watch us pass, was a profusion of beautiful and enticing men. 

They came in a variety of shapes, colours, ages, and styles—as if the Empire and all her diversity were on display. Many seemed to be wearing a costume of some kind, often that of a working-class man such as a dockhand, carpenter, or blacksmith. A few donned suits like Holmes and myself—though it was unclear if they were staff or clientele—and several appeared to be of high society. Quite a number were bare-chested or garbed in even less. One nubile young man passed us with naught but the garters on his legs (Holmes gave his cock a playful squeeze as he went by, to which he smiled). 

Some of the men smoked cigars or pipes and most held drinks in their hands. They chatted amiably with one another, hands caressing sides, lips brushing against bare skin. Off to one side a group was dancing with the music; in pairs, like frontiersmen. While I have been with my fair share of prostitutes and even entered a molly house or two in my life, this scene was unlike anything I’d ever before experienced. The atmosphere was so open and unguarded, the attitudes so cavalier in regards to sins of the flesh. Here and there, I even saw men engaging in sexual acts, wantonly and without regard as to who was watching. Though I had just spent my seed in Drebber, I could feel lust reawakening within me.

“Holmes,” I said, still unable to comprehend the images around us. “Why have we come here?”

“To gather information,” he replied, locking eyes with a well-dressed man whose dick was currently being enveloped by a bearded mouth. “And perhaps a few other things.”

“But if this is a place for gentlemen only, then what about Bess and her… attire?”

Holmes did not seem as caught up in this point as I was. “As proprietress of this establishment, she often takes certain liberties; observing the dalliances of her patrons for instance. I believe her choice of dress facilitates her hand playing with her own cunt.”

“Are you telling me she relishes watching the couplings of men?”

“Many women do.”

This thought was a novel and shocking as any. “Human sexuality is more complicated than I ever imagined.”

Holmes beamed. “Stick with me, Doctor, and I hope you will become entranced with the finest study I ever came across: a study in fornication. After all, there’s the thread of sex running through this colourless skein of life, and our duty is to follow its every inch, and see where it takes us. But now for delights, and then for Norman Neruda. Her attack and her bowing are splendid. What’s that little thing of Chopin’s she plays so magnificently: Tra-la-la-lira-lira-lay.”

Parting ways with me in the wonderland before us, this amateur bloodhound carolled away like a lark while I meditated upon the many-sidedness of the human mind. Finding a secluded sofa, I sat to catch my spinning head. I had always considered myself open to new experiences, certainly of the erotic variety, but a few short weeks with Holmes had already opened up vistas I’d scarcely dreamed about. This strange free-spirited world I had entered seemed ever more fantastic with each passing day, and Holmes himself an ever greater mystery and temptation.

“Would you care for some, effendi?” said a delicate voice beside me, interrupting my thoughts.

I turned to see that the couch I’d chosen was not as private as I first believed. An appealing man sat in the dark corner, his body half wreathed in shadow. His skin was cinnamon brown, his eyes dark as midnight, his lashes long and lovely. He appeared to be in his early twenties, though the top of his head was bare and smooth, and a finely-trimmed beard of wiry black hair plastered his cheeks. He was shirtless and I could see another tuft of coarse hair covering his pectoral muscles and nipples. 

In his hand he held the wooden handle of a long hose. This was connected to a water pipe, a device I recognized; the men in Afghanistan had called it a huqqa. The young Moor at my side stated that it contained hashish, though I was still reeling and didn’t fully pay attention to his words. Offhandedly thanking him, I took the hose and sucked in a long draw. The smoke was scented with rose and a lungful relaxed my beating heart. 

“Is everything to your liking?” the man asked, taking a drag himself and smiling.

With the smoke rushing into my head, I felt momentarily bewildered. “Yes,” I said, and then repeated myself. “Yes.”

The candles began to glow with a buttery light, the room resembling the oil painting of an Impressionist. The long-lashed man shuffled closer. As he emerged fully from shadow, I saw that he was nude. His organ was thick and serpentine, draped softly over one of his legs. His Mohammedan heritage was clear—the exposed purple head of his dick facing toward me, swelling. He allowed his fingers to gently play along its length.

“Anything else I can help you with, effendi?” he asked in a low voice. 

Swallowing, I tried to think of an answer. My yearning was glowing hot and bright but the situation, and perhaps the hashish, held me immobile. My mind fluttering like the pages of a book caught in a draft, I sputtered nonsensical utterances. 

“Ah!” said another voice, saving me. “Mr. Williams!”

I snapped around to find Holmes returning, a half-dressed man under one arm and fluted glass in the other hand. 

“Seems you’re making yourself comfortable,” said Holmes. “I myself have found a dashing companion. His name is John Rance.”

The man he held sported wild brunet sideburns and a toothy grin. His face seemed rather low-brow for my tastes, with a crooked nose and a scar above one eye. He wore the pants and shoes of a constable, though the rest of his uniform seemed to have gone missing. Holmes appeared delighted with his find. 

“He rather enjoys having his armpits licked,” said Holmes, demonstrating with a protracted taste of the man’s underarm that made Rance laugh. “And this one—” Holmes scrutinized the Moslem on the couch beside me— “He seems like he’s up for a bit of anything.”

Extending his hand, Holmes pulled the darker-skinned man from the couch, slapping his naked, hairy arse once he rose. He placed an arm over the man’s shoulder and aimed his two conquests away into the club. Stunned and stoned, I watched them disappear into the haze. 

Nursing my annoyance with the huqqa hose, I sank deeper into a stupor. Who does Holmes think he is—a debauched Casanova expecting everyone to bend to his disgusting whims? If the price of this hedonistic lifestyle was relinquishing control over my own power, then perhaps I’d prefer to return to Baker Street alone tonight. 

“That was rather rude,” said a voice. 

A well-groomed fellow had crossed the room to stand above me. He was smartly-dressed and carried a walking stick with a jewel. Smiling, he asked if he could take the open seat on the couch. His face was rather kind, with sparkling blue eyes and a debonair moustache decorating his upper lip. He wore his auburn hair long though neatly combed. Despite my ruffled condition, I took a liking to him and moved over to allow him a place on the couch. 

“Of course my motto is this,” the man said, accepting the huqqa hose, “Always make the best of whatever situation you find yourself in.” Taking a drag, he allowed the smoke to slowly pour from his nostrils, the tendrils curling up and around his enchanting eyes. 

Shaking my head, I realized that I’d fallen into an abysmal state. Holmes had affected me more strongly than I cared to admit. Here I was in a veritable paradise; there was no sense sulking. Why venture home alone when men were readily available all around? 

After my new companion caught the attention of passerby and asked him to bring us two beers, he turned to me. "Saul, Jack Saul, Sir, of Lisle Street, Leicester Square, and ready for a lark with a free gentleman at any time." He told me he was twenty-four and originally from Dublin.

I introduced myself using Holmes’ invented alias, though gave him no further particulars. Despite the fact that I could tell he was an escort of this club, I was having trouble finding a suitable topic of conversation. My confidence had been dealt a severe blow and I had yet to regain my footing. Just then, our beers arrived and we passed a moment in drinking them. 

Jack Saul of Lisle Street seemed content to simply sit beside me. He pressed his thigh calmly against mine, though gave no additional indication of interest. Clearly, it was up to me to initiate further interactions. 

“Have you been with a man before, Mr. Williams?” said Saul, lightly. 

“Certainly,” I managed to say. “Though I’m afraid I’m a bit out of my element now.”

“Why is that?”

“I’ve simply never been in a place where love was both offered and taken so freely. To me, affairs of the bedroom have always remained behind closed doors. Seeing them exposed in this manner is more disorienting than I would have expected.”

Across the room, through the curtain of smoke, I could see Holmes in outline. He was naked and his enormous curving implement stuck out pompously before him. He threw the side-burned Rance over the back of a couch and immediately sank his massive manhood all the way into Rance’s snug arsehole. Soft moans carried over to my ears. The darker-skinned man Holmes had stolen took a position beneath Rance, deftly swallowing his cock while rubbing his own circumcised member. Several nearby patrons began to touch themselves, watching the action attentively.

Beside me, Saul leaned over to whisper delicately in my ear. “And are you not interested in growing more accustomed to such circumstances?” 

Somehow, my limbs had become entwined with his, and my hand had come to rest upon his crotch. A growing hardness was evident beneath the cloth. 

“Oh yes,” I breathed, unable to tear myself away from the performance across the room. 

Saul directed my hand into his trousers, and my fingers curled around his organ. It was thick and long, though the details of its scope were hidden beneath the cloth. Reflexively, I began to tug at the shaft. Saul’s hand slipped into my pants and found my own stiffness, and he murmured delightedly at his discovery.

“Then what say we pull these endowments out and give the men around us a show?”

My head fell back in pleasure as Saul tugged at my foreskin. Sensations had become heightened due to the marihuana smoke. My cockhead was damp with precum. A whimper escaped my lips. 

Righting myself, I begged Saul to stop. “Please. I want to feel you. But not here—I need privacy.”

Twitching his moustache left to right, Saul gave me a wicked smile. He retracted his hand from my rigidity. “Of course. There are rooms we could go to for seclusion.”

He stood and pulled me up. After planting a sweet kiss upon my lips, he held my hand and bade me to follow him. Holmes’ orgiastic display disappeared into the smoke, as if it had been nothing more than a mirage. Noticing how, despite my best efforts, I continued to look back at the scene, Saul asked whether or not I knew the man who had swooped in earlier to claim my prize. 

“Somewhat,” I admitted. 

Saul squeezed my palm. “I have seen him before at the club. He strikes me as a rather lonely individual, filling his life with things he doesn’t really need in order to distract himself from what he really wants.”

“And what is that?”

Saul’s silently raised eyebrows were the only answer I received.

We reached a series of doors, from behind which issued sounds of pleasure. Courteously opening each one, Saul and I found that most were occupied with pairs, trios, or more; fucking. I believe Saul lingered on the inhabits for slightly longer than could be considered decent in order to amplify my arousal. After each viewing, he kissed me deeply, and our clothing beginning to unravel on our bodies.

By the time we reached an empty space my shirt had flown open and Saul’s tantalizing hands were running through the ursine pelt on my chest and stomach. He was shirtless too, his physique slim, though his muscles were toned like that of a swimmer. Looking at him, I could almost name each grouping in the anatomy chart: deltoids, biceps, pectorals, obliques; my fingers and lips touching each in turn. A small diamond of hair sprouted at his sternum but he was otherwise smooth. 

Alone at last, I felt more free to take my pleasure with him. We kissed with abandon, tongues intermingling like Parisians. The room was dark as ever, a single candle placed on a pewter tray near a mattress on the floor. Piles of pillows and blankets spilled from this rough-and-ready bed. The fact that hundreds of other men had previously given themselves to one another should have repelled me, but it instead stiffened me further. 

Saul and I fell together into the downy softness of the bed, eventually landing in a position where he straddled me from above, our bodies pointed in opposite directions. Undoing the clasps on my trousers, he pulled them down to my ankles as he slid his chest over mine. He rubbed his face at the bulge in my underwear. Sniffing like a fox, he inhaled my aroma, as if no bouquet had ever been finer. His tongue slipped into my underpants just at the point where my legs met—that responsive patch behind my balls—and I squirmed, tugging uncontrollably at my beard and curls. 

He fished out my towering implement, busily moving his lips over the head to collect the succulent juices that had issued forth. The hashish had intensified my awareness, my mind zeroing in on what would provide me with the greatest enjoyment. Seeing his legs over my head, I knew precisely what I wanted. Reaching up, I undid his belt and removed his accouterments. His knob sprang out, the fat tip practically knocking me in the eye. He was as at least large as I was—perhaps a bit shorter though certainly thicker. 

Pulling the foreskin back, studying it carefully, I marveled at the object in my hand. Though I am a connoisseur of cocks, I know they are not always what one would call beautiful. Yet his was magnificent; evenly thick and immense, the slightest curve tapering upward to a perfectly rounded dome; the Platonic ideal of dick. Holding the shaft with two hands, I accepted Saul’s splendor into my mouth. 

We swallowed each other’s swords, the two of us groaning with delight. Neither of our skills could match Drebber’s, though throaty encapsulation need not be the only goal in cock-sucking. After driving down as far as I could, I would pull his enormity from my mouth and run my lips up and down its extensive sides. My tongue tasted his wonderful bollocks and soon his entire crotch was dripping with saliva and other fluids. The warm wet feelings issuing from my own private parts were already almost more than I could bear. 

But now Saul introduced a new element, his finger gently probing at the spot behind my hairy sack. It moved in a posterior direction, landing directly in my twitching hole and sending electric enchantments up and down my body. Matching his movements, I explored his rear end, finding it smooth as his body save a ring of hair just around the opening. Naturally, my mouth gravitated that way. Shortly, my tongue had taken over for my fingers and he returned the favor in kind, each of us diving headfirst into the other’s sweaty crack. We relished our mutual anal-lingual stimulation, our hands running over each other’s glutes, occasionally reaching to tug at each other’s rods. 

Caught up in a riot of sensations, I knew the next thing I needed—to feel Saul’s thick hardness opening up my aperture. It was not an indulgence I always dallied in, but there were times when no other position could satisfy my urges. Taking control, I shuffled out from beneath Saul and flipped him over on his back. He wriggled on the bed excitedly, wondering what I had in store. Straddling him like a horseman, I arched my buttocks, grabbing his shaft and rubbing it against my hole. An itching need had started to spread throughout my opening. The feeling of his massive cockhead temporarily relieved it, but I required even greater pleasures. 

On the pewter dish sat an array of oils and unguents. We each reached over to grab one; I smearing ointment on my impatient arsehole while he coated his substantial member with cream. Leaning down, I kissed him. We locked eyes in the low candlelight, sweat dripping down our faces. His ebullient smile melted my heart. This moment, the calm before the fucking, was one I wanted to savor for as long as I could. 

Of course, my body had other needs that soon announced themselves. My pucker was now twitching expectantly and so I once again moved backwards over Saul’s body. His tip slipped unexpectedly into my compartment; the task happening so smoothly that it stunned me. Normally, I required a fair amount of digital encouragement to relax my purse strings yet here we were, Saul’s glans already working its way into my hole. Sighing with a combination of delight and surprise, I felt his stiffness dig slightly deeper. Saul looked at me as if to ask if everything was alright and I nodded to indicate that he continue. 

Another inch of his largesse slid into my slot, stretching my sphincter. My arsehole accepted the girth without complaint, the pucker pliable as soft butter. It drove me into a frenzy, running my hands through my chest hair, pinching my tender nipples, and making me shift my hips farther back to capture more of this man’s magical endowment. The grin on his face indicated his delight, as if he knew the agitation his instrument could induce, and he gave my buttocks a few encouraging slaps. He drove farther inside me and I welcomed his intruder with zeal. 

My nerve endings were ablaze as we reached the end of his shaft, the base of his cock resting against my cheeks. Leaning back, I teased his hole, tickled his balls, and felt the spot where his thickness entered me. It seemed almost too colossal to be possible. He began to rock his hips up and down ever so slightly, stoking my pleasure and provoking me to new heights. My dick dribbled fluid onto his chest. He wrapped two hands around my enormous shaft, which jutted outrageously outward, and squeezed tight. 

At first, I directed the thrusting. Stroking forward, I was able to evacuate most of his magnitude from my cavity, bringing my cockhead nearly to his chin, before plunging him all the way back inside, driving us both to ecstasy. But then he took control, ploughing me a brisk pace, his magnificent implement lunging expertly in and out. The sensation was celestial, my entire being opening from his skill and proficiency. I would not be surprised if our jubilant cries could be heard in Eton. 

We shifted positions a few times; he taking me on my back, then from behind while I crouched on all fours. Eventually, we settled on our sides, he spooning me as my left leg stuck straight up into the air. He played his fingers over my erection like a practiced musician on their favorite instrument, bringing me close to the edge but subsiding just before I came. All the while his unbelievable attribute dove into my trembling pucker, coaxing me farther and farther toward Arcadian bliss. With each ingress, I felt the pressure on my prostate, the crowding of my compartment, the astonishing hardness and strength of his enormity. I wanted this delight to be never-ending. 

Yet nothing can last forever. A man accepting another man deep inside him, opening up his sanctum sanctorum, was among the methods that would most readily bring both to come. Enraptured by Saul’s implement, I marveled at the fact that not all men allowed themselves such pleasure; that we alone had figured this beautiful indulgence. I realized that sliding tower, glistening as it worked its exquisite occupation of my arsehole, sundering my body, was not something to be hidden in shadows, covert and clandestine. It was right and good to allow these acts their necessary place among the wonders of the human experience.

With these heady thoughts whirling through my mind, my cock began to spasm, expelling a tremendous milky white stream that coated my torso, my neck, my face, and even Saul’s. We drank in its delectable spray, more copious than I believe I’ve ever before produced, as waves of abandoning joy traveled toe to crown through my being. Saul continued his thrusts for a few more heavenly moments before giving in to his own expulsion. As he came, he pulled out his magnificence and aimed it all around, dousing us both in a second shower of sticky discharge. 

Nuzzling my neck, he whispered in wonderment about the unbelievable partaking we had both shared. “You are a savant of sex, my friend. Do not close yourself off from others.” After cleaning off, I thanked and paid him. Lingering on the bed, we held each other, kissing and embracing while reiterating our mutual bond, our soft endowments rubbing against one another. I knew this would not be the last time I sought out the company of Jack Saul.

Eventually, I drifted back out into the club. Coming back to the couch, I found the aftermath of Holmes’ exhibition. Rance and the Moor were sprawled and sated, dreamy grins on their faces as they drifted off the sleep in each other’s arms. Some of the looky-loos around them had taken to coupling in the low light, and a faint background of grunts and moans could be heard all around. Holmes himself had nearly finished dressing, smartly fastening the clasps of his cufflinks as I approached. 

“Was a good time had by all?” he asked, tipping his head playfully. I nodded, though did not wish to go into particulars. “Well, during my exertions I learned an interesting fact: Joseph Strangerson has been here recently.”

In spite of the pleasures around me, my mind turned back to the case. “How did you find that out?”

“He and Rance were occasional lovers. But Strangerson had rejected Rance’s most recent offer of a dalliance. Apparently, Strangerson had rekindled an affair with an old paramour, a Mr. Jefferson Hope, and would have no other.”

“Do you suppose that is the man who came between him and Drebber?”

“I am certain. And here is another curiosity: all three of these men are followers of the Church of Latter-Day Saints.”

“The American sect? What significance does that have?”

But Holmes had hidden his thoughts once again behind a secretive smirk. “Come, Watson, or I shall be late for Chopin.”

**Chapter V: Tobias Gregson shows what he can do**

Our day’s exertions had been too much for my health, and I was tired out in the afternoon. After Holmes’ departure for the concert, I lay down upon the sofa in my underwear and endeavoured to get a couple of hours’ sleep. My mind had been too much excited by all that occurred, and the strangest fancies and surmises crowded into it. Every time I closed my eyes I saw before me a cavalcade of cocks and arses, of beautiful men touching one another obscenely. Though I had unleashed myself twice already that day, I felt a hardness returning. I caressed my crotch and then brought up my fingers to smell the sex that had spread upon them.

At that moment, there was a violent peal at the bell. The sound of the door opening and a person dashing up the steps three at a time echoed throughout the room. In another life, I would have jumped from my reclining position and attempted to cover my iniquity but instead I remained in a reclining position on the couch, my bushy legs flaunting their socks and garters, the rounded bulge in my underpants scarcely hidden behind my resting right hand.

The living room door burst open and in came the fair-haired detective Gregson, oblivious to my disarray. “My dear fellow,” he cried, “congratulate me! I have made the whole thing clear as day.”

He turned a shade pale as he realized that he appeared to have caught me at an inopportune time. Averting his gaze, he suggested that he should have announced his coming. But some glimmer in his eye suggested that his finding me in this fashion was not entirely to his dissatisfaction.

“It’s no matter,” I said, feeling at the height of relaxation. Gregson’s sudden entrance should have sent me scurrying, but it instead gave me no qualms. There was a sense of satisfaction at having my nearly-nude body on display, the tuffs of chest hair peeking through my undershirt, especially for a delightful dish such as himself. Though I have heretofore neglected to mention it, Gregson was an exceedingly handsome fellow, with enthralling emerald eyes and a neat blond beard adorning his cheeks. He was solidly built, like myself, and I could tell that the physique of a boxer lay concealed beneath his tight-cut checkered suit. His innocent distress made him all the more endearing. 

“Come now,” I said, grinning with reassurance. “Tell me what it is that brought you here in such a state.”

Gregson paced, seeming to wish that I were more properly attired. But he did what any good Englishman would do in an uncomfortable situation and ignored it. I must admit to deriving some pleasure from watching him struggle. 

“It is just that I— that is, I believe to have figured out the case.”

Shifting on the couch, I offered him a seat. “I’m anxious to hear how you managed it. Please, let’s light some cigars to indulge in as you tell me. Will you have some whiskey and water?”

The agitated detective accepted all of my offerings, ensuring that a decent amount of space stood between as sat on the settee with the rum-flavoured cheroot and tinkling glass in his hands. Taking my time, I lit my own cigar, watching his eyes dart about the room in every direction but of my undressed repose. 

I’d once asked Holmes about the characters of the two Scotland Yarders he worked with. The pick of a bad lot, he’d replied, and as jealous of his deductive skills as a pair of professional beauties. Holmes had assured me that both Gregson and Lestrade were quick and energetic, but conventional—in every respect. Early on, he’d suspected that they “had their knives into one another,” a slang term for men of our persuasion who bed each other, but later he had changed his mind. Despite repeated attempts, neither the sour Lestrade nor his cheerier partner had ever given in to Holmes’ self-described charms. Looking at Gregson’s reddened face now, I wondered whether or not my dear flat-mate ever made mistakes in his assessments.

Soon, a cloud of fine-scented smoke billowed about the two of us. The thin veil provided a touch of modesty to our scene and Gregson slowly began to unwind. The dark spirit in his glass also appeared to put him at ease, and he told me at length about his suppositions. The particulars seemed to be in something of the right direction, with Gregson correctly identifying Drebber and Strangerson as members of the American religious movement known as Mormonism. But he was under the impression that the robbery had been genuine, committed by a man named Arthur Charpentier, sub-lieutenant in Her Majesty’s navy.

“It all sounds well and good,” I said, languidly stretching my arms. “Though I will have to put these ideas to Holmes to see what he makes of them.”

Gregson held himself starchily as I scratched at the fur just below my neck. “And do you always trust the judgments of Mr. Holmes above all others?”

I smiled. “He seems to have a remarkable knack for exactitude. Elsewise you and Lestrade would not be consulting with him, eh?”

Gregson took my ribbing in stride, admitting that he also found my good friend’s skills remarkable. He told me that he had only been working with Lestrade a short time. At the beginning of his occupation, he had failed to understand why his senior partner put up with so strange a man as Holmes. But he had been won over after multiple displays of the Holmes’ incredible talents. Here Gregson blushed, perhaps at some memory surfacing in his mind.

“Your association with him appears an anomaly,” he said, suddenly turning to me with a curious look. “Though I have seen him with a number of… companions… it has never been twice the same man.” This information was news to me, and a mixture of emotions—bewilderment, discomfiture, satisfaction—stirred within my breast. “You seem a good match for him,” Gregson continued. “I’m not sure he could have interrogated Mr. Drebber so satisfactorily without you.”

Recollection of that encounter caused blood to flow in my nethers and a moment of awkward silence passed as the mound in my underpants noticeably grew. As we waited, I took a mouthful of smoke from my cigar. “Yes,” I said, feeling bold. “The cross-examination was particularly captivating. Perhaps you would have liked to have witnessed it yourself?”

Gregson remained rigid and aloof, giving me no indication of his thoughts. The man began to colour even more. “That would have been entirely inappropriate.”

I launched into a hearty laugh, knocking the virtuous detective with a friendly punch to the shoulder. “Ah, Gregson, I am only teasing. I know you are not interested in the pleasures that Holmes and I partake in. Please, let me refill your drink, it has run low.”

My companionability seemed to help calm him once again and the fact that I had referred openly to matters normally approached discreetly furthered the air of familiarity between us. He took another whiskey and was on the verge of saying something before thinking the better of it. He formed a new question. “How is it that you and Holmes came to know one another?”

I explained the particulars of our introduction, alluding only obliquely to my friend Stamford and the actions that tied us all together. But Gregson appeared to gather the subtext rather easily, swallowing a large dram from his glass as if to douse an internal conflagration blazing within him. In an agitated and somewhat high-pitched voice, he asked if I had always known of my attraction to other men. 

“Oh yes, indeed,” I answered. “From the time I was young.” 

He began, almost absentmindedly, to pick at the top button of his collar. “When did you first act upon your desires?”

“Ah, now that is a reminiscence that I haven’t thought about in some time. I was but sixteen upon my introduction to male passion. The inductor was my Greek instructor at boarding school—a cliché, I know, but he was incredibly handsome and not more than twenty-four himself. The two of us had an instant connection with one another, our eyes constantly catching during lectures. One day, he bade me remain after class, saying that he needed to give me some private lesson. He hovered over my shoulder as we worked through a complex conjugation exercise and I felt his hot breath on my shoulder. Daringly, I had put my hand on his crotch, his ardor evident beneath his trousers. Fishing out his implement, I took it into my mouth, sucking adeptly on his inflated tool. He came goblets of come, which I greedily swallowed. A few days later, he introduced me to even finer pleasures, fingering my virginal arsehole and eventually lunging into it with his well-endowed instrument. We fucked daily for the entire year after that.”

Though Gregson remained under control, I could see that the story had a prodigious effect on him, and his breath caught when I uttered the final sentences. Almost inaudibly, he mentioned that he wished he could be so courageous. 

By this point, my erection was starting to strain at the fabric of my underwear. “Have you ever found yourself under similar circumstances?” I asked, realizing where our current situation was likely headed. 

Gregson bit his lips and turned his head away. “Perhaps.”

I spoke in a low and steady voice. “Come now, Gregson, have courage. Why did you so boisterously barge into the residence of two men such as Holmes and myself? Were you, perhaps, hoping to witness a scene similar to the earlier one at Dreber’s manor?”

The scent of danger and lust was strong about his figure as he turned back to me. “Dr. Watson, I must remind you that I am a member of the police force. As such, I must uphold all the laws of Parliament. The actions you refer to are…”

Of course, I wasn’t about to let slip this beguiling opportunity and so I tipped forward and planted a tender kiss on Gregson’s lips. He gave but a moment’s resistance, first pushing me away but then melting into my arms as we passionately embraced. Our bodies seemed magnetically charged, pressing together in a heady pull. I allowed my hand to enter beneath his coat, running my fingers over the shirt covering his nipples. Surprised and aroused, he gently moaned. 

Reclining again, I spread a wicked grin over my lips. “You must understand, Gregson. I am well versed in keeping secrets. I would never tell anyone about certain actions that were to happen here in this apartment.”

He seemed stupefied by my kiss, as if I’d hit him upon the head with the hammer. With his eyes ablaze, he leapt upon me, seeking my lips once more, sending his hands all over the muscled burliness of my body. I encouraged his explorations, pushing his palm down to my crotch, to feel the inflated implement hiding within my undergarment. 

This inflamed him even more and he began to tear off his own jacket as we continued kissing, undoing the clasps and fasteners of his clothing. He pulled back his head, his hand bonded to the outline of my thick endowment, as if he could scarcely believe its existence. Giving him what he wanted, I tugged at the waistband of my underwear and allowed my enormity to spring free. A joyous cry escaped his lips as he first glimpsed my rod, proudly erect within its bushel of hair, a drop of precum leaking from its tip. I smiled. Seeing men react to the sight of my cock is a pleasure that will never grow old. 

Gregson began to stammer. “I— I can’t contain myself. This is simply…”

But he was unable to finish his sentence as he had immediately lowered his face and placed my engorged crown upon his tongue. He closed his eyes, savoring the taste, the sensation, the overwhelming emotions associated with finally partaking in cravings that had long remained buried beneath propriety. Settling back, I allowed Gregson to descend upon my member, watching as his lips passed over the corona and frenulum of my cockhead. With the zeal of a new convert, he attempted to sink its immense thickness over and over into the depths of his soft mouth. Warm rhapsodic satisfaction spread throughout my body.

The man needed no instruction in his enjoyment, pulling out my towering instrument and rubbing it all over his face like a puppy playing with a prized possession. The glossolalia of a frenzied worshiper issued forth from his mouth, an overexcited series of moans, sighs, and exuberant exclamations. Some coherent words appeared, and I gathered that he was thankful for my introducing him to the pleasures of manhood. He told me that he had also been stirred by the sight of nude men but had always deeply suppressed such desires. It was only when he walked in on Holmes, myself, and Drebber earlier today that he realized the extent of his longing. Our unrestricted activities had reawakened a lust that he considered long since extinguished.

“Oh, Gregson,” I thought. “You have yet to see what delights lay in store for you.”

Pushing him back, I slid down to my knees before him and unbuckled his belt. Fishing out his engorgement, I placed it in my mouth, savoring its musky flavor, that mixture of sweat and pre-ejaculatory fluid which had come to coat it. Gregson responded by throwing back his head and panting ecstatically. I tugged off his trousers and underwear, throwing them both to the side as I took a good long look at his member. It was neither large nor small, and had a charming upward bend. His bullocks, on the other hand, were enormous, entirely outsized for his particular organ, and I delighted in nuzzling my face against these ovoid treasures within their hairy nest. I sucked one, then the other, running my tongue over their curvature while they were encased inside my mouth. Gregson gasped euphorically at each action and additional fluid came leaking from his tip.

Cradling his balls in my hand, I returned to his cock, urging as much of it into my oral cavity as I could. I do not always have the skills of other men—having never been particularly good at the exploit known as ‘deep-throating’—but there are times when my chute can be coaxed into performing incredible feats. Perhaps I merely wanted to show off for Gregson’s first encounter. But with slow and deliberate movements, I was able to slip farther and farther down his shaft, pausing occasionally to ensure that I could continue breathing without trouble. And quite soon, his entire erection was lodged deep within my vestibule, my lips pressing up against the wiry hairs of his crotch. 

The pressure against my palate felt astounding, and the accomplishment of disappearing the length of his dick into my fore-end with no gagging reflex filled me with pride. Gregson’s heavy exhalations suggested that the situation was rather overwhelming for him as well. His instincts bade him place his hands upon the back of my head and start to rhythmically thrust his hips. The incursion was not unwelcome and I was impressed with myself for managing to provide the man with what he clearly so desired. As he fucked my face, his bountiful bullocks slapped repeatedly against my chin, the feeling incredible and gratifying. 

Almost without warning, Gregson came, his scrotum tightening as ropes of savory cream erupted into my throat. He grunted and groaned, pressing his groin against my mouth until he had exhausted his repository. I pulled myself off when he finished, smacking my lips and wiping the excess fluid from my moustache. 

“That was quite delightful,” I said, believing he might be done. In certain cases, I have seen men grow embarrassed and uncomfortable as soon as they achieve their orgasm and I did not wish to have Gregson turn panic-stricken. 

In fact, the opposite was true and the junior detective seemed distraught that this licentious episode might be over so quickly. “No, no, no,” he said, turning his head from side to side. “This can not be the end of it!”

With ardor in his bright green eyes, he flipped over, placing his stomach on the couch and thrusting his buttocks out obscenely. He ordered me to drive my tongue between his cheeks, exclaiming that he needed to feel my appendage stuffing his antechamber before the day was through. Such an alluring invitation could not lightly go unfulfilled and I quickly heeded Gregson’s request. 

While squeezing the tip of my dick, I ran my nose over his arse and balls, inhaling the lustful odor of his sex. He squirmed with bliss as my wet tongue found the puckered aperture of his wondrous hole, continuously crying ‘”Yes!” as I licked his sensitive orifice. Internally, I wondered if it was right to claim the virginity of this man, and whether or not he would be up to the task of accepting my rather large implement, though the throbbing of my privates overrode most of my reservations. 

Doffing my undergarments, I stood and assisted Gregson in removing the remainder of his clothing, the two of us now entirely naked in the drawing room. I took a moment to examine his beautiful body, which was as robust and brawny as I had imagined. His muscular physique was covered in a downy fuzz, a lighter match to my own coarse hirsuteness. I ran my hands along his sides, tugging at his fine chest hair as he arched his back and spread his butt cheeks below me. I spit on his hole and began to rub my member against his crack, which caused him to convulse in rapturous shivers. By now, he was fully hard again and I grabbed his shaft while placing another deep long kiss onto his lips. 

He gazed into my eyes and told me he had long dreamt of a day such as this. While touching himself alone, he had often stuck his fingers within his craving cavity and even used cylindrical instruments on occasion to satisfy his vexing urges. Such details fueled my own desire and I pressed my husky figure against his, hammering my raging organ against his slippery buttocks. Unstoppering a bottle from the side table, I smeared my hand in unguent and tickled my fingers against his pucker. He entreated my ingress and soon I’d snuck my smallest digit into the tight opening. 

Gregson was already rather relaxed, or perhaps his solitary explorations had helped him understand what was necessary, and I found it no trouble to slip another finger and then even a third into his snug recesses. “My, my,” I said, aroused beyond belief, and he responded by bucking his buttocks against my hand and moaning like a person possessed. 

It seemed that there was nothing left to do but introduce my considerable cock to his eager receptacle and, with Gregson encouraging me the whole way, I doused my shaft in lotion and placed the head against his outlet. With almost no effort, my crown vanished into the enticing compartment and then the entire length glided past Gregson’s voracious arsehole. 

“Is this really your first time?” I said, wrapping my arms his body as we both felt our connection. 

He gave an affirmative grunt, too lost in pleasure to properly respond. His sphinctral muscles reflexively spasmed, enjoyably compressing the article I had lodged inside him. Gregson howled with delight, his sensory systems no doubt overcome by the novel incidents they were experiencing. I tipped back my hips ever so slightly, just to see how lenient his hole would be, and found that the man was going to make for a fine cock-bearer—his exquisite orifice was already quite supple. 

With the two of us covered in sweat, I began to rock in and out of his inviting entryway as we both produced feral growls. Cascades of sensual bliss radiated from my ample instrument and I could tell that Gregson was receiving similar signals in his body from his receptive aperture. I modulated my thrusts, sometimes pounding away like Hephaestus at his anvil and other times slowing the cadence to a provocative pace. Occasionally, I pinched my partner’s tender nipples with a playful squeeze or slapped his downy buttocks with an open palm, each time eliciting joyous cries. 

Our activity must have been loud and overpowering for it wasn’t until we both heard the sudden sound of the door closing and locking that we realized there was someone else in the room.

“Why Watson,” said Holmes, grinning at the carnal sight before him. “My impression was that we’d agreed to keep such things confined to the bedrooms.”

Our rutting, sweat-stained bodies froze, my colossal implement shoved as far inside Gregson as could be managed. Explanatory words entirely failed to form inside my mind.

“It is no matter, of course,” said Holmes, placing his hat upon the coatrack. “I have been working for some time trying to crack the nut of Gregson’s desires. Glad that you, my dear Watson, have finally managed it.”

With an air of utter nonchalance, my flat-mate began to undress, removing first his tweed jacket and cravat, then his Oxford shoes, his argyle socks, his woolen trousers, his vest, his shirt, his undershirt, his underwear, and finally standing, nude and captivating, with his gargantuan uncut colossus bulging and entirely erect in front of him. Though neither Gregson and I moved throughout the mesmerizing performance, it produced a rousing effect, causing both my cock and his arsehole to twitch expectantly. 

Holmes continued: “But I must say, Watson, I am surprised. You are giving Gregson a fine education in male bonding, but appear to be withholding half the pleasure.”

With this, he turned and faced us with his rear, crouching into a squat to render apart his butt cheeks. Though thus far Holmes’ enormous frontal appendage has been the focus of much narrative attention, his backside is also worth some careful consideration. Holmes’ muscled buttocks resembled smooth granite boulders, their vigor no doubt strengthened from many hours of outstanding thrusting. Each cheek had but the fairest amount of hair, yet remained among the most masculine of any anatomical structure I’d ever seen. Within his precipitous crack lay a delectable roseate pucker, which Holmes was now displaying proudly for his double audience.

While locking his eyes upon the two of us, he picked up a small bottle from the floor and dabbed some lubricant upon his fingers. He rubbed his hole with his slippery hand and carefully inserted a digit into the rose-colored crevice. The routine had its intended effect—almost absentmindedly, I began to once again slide my wide contrivance into and out of Gregson’s snugness. Holmes smiled and nodded his head encouragingly, pressing another finger into his enticing slot. 

While still crouching, he slowly backed up towards the couch, proffering his prize to us two spectators. His arse was nearly at Gregson’s nose when Holmes stopped. My penetrated partner seemed at something of a loss with how to proceed and I could feel his confusion emanating distinctly. At that moment, Holmes caught my eyes and we shared a look. I knew what I was to do. 

Reaching forward, I grabbed the back of Gregson’s golden hair and maneuvered his bearded face into Holmes’ crack. He responded like a trained animal and, swiftly realizing what was expected of him, began to lick at Holmes’ hole. My flat-mate and I shared a grin as we both got down to business. 

Continuing my earlier actions, I pumped at Gregson’s aperture, placing my hands upon his fair-haired buttocks to better direct my lunges. The immediate effect of this incursion was to send the young detective into a frantic whirl of tongue lashing, licking his lingual instrument all about Holmes’ rear end and occasionally even sending it to investigate the interior of the luscious compartment. Holmes took Gregson’s hands and placed them upon his enormous member, encouraging him to stroke it and experience the grandeur of its ridiculous dimensions. This tactile exploration extended to Holmes’ butthole, with each man placing fingers inside of Holmes at various times, loosening him for what was to come. Witnessing this incredible and sordid scene quickened my stroke, and all three of us issued groans of ecstatic delight. 

Following the requisite amount of stimulation, Holmes stood and arched his arse away from Gregson’s tongue, wagging his posterior like a saucy ingénue. Gregson became once again confused but my lust-filled mind knew exactly what was necessary. Coating Gregson’s dick in ointment, I aimed it true and, directing his hips forward with my embedded instrument, plunged the head into Holmes’ hole. Both men gave a satisfied moan and I knew that my movements had been enthusiastically received. Looking back at me, Holmes winked his eye and nodded to indicate that we should proceed. Our combined bodies slid tenderly forward upon Gregson’s shaft, which sank ever deeper into Holmes’ randy receptacle. Gregson’s considerable bullocks finally came to rest within the cushioning crack of Holmes’ bottom. 

“Well done!” said Holmes in an encouraging voice. “Really, Gregson, you are getting along. We shall make something of you yet.”

The sights, sounds, smells, and sensations of the scene sent me into conniptions of unbridled pleasure. Without delay, I drove the full length of my erection into Gregson’s inviting warmth and began to buck both of our hips together. This induced him to plunge in and out of Holmes’ slick slot, producing the most orgasmic of cries from his mouth. His breath quickened and he tore at his beard and brow—indications of the tremendous dual commotions now traveling through his body. I certainly envied him. It’s not every day that a man gets to delve his dick into a fine and eager opening while simultaneously having his backend stretched by an expansive and hardy implement. 

We frolicked in this manner for a while, with me directing most of the performance. I delighted in feeling Gregson’s heavy balls slap back and forth, sometimes coming up to contact my nether region but mostly producing the most magnificent smacking sound upon Holmes’ buttocks. Eventually Gregson took over the lunges, moving himself back and forth upon the effective skewer of our combined rods, allowing my grandeur to tickle that innermost pleasure point inside his canal while concurrently egressing and ingressing from the luxury of Holmes’ compartment. Perspiration dripped from my chest to Gregson’s torso to Holmes’ back, the three of us as lubricous as a set of Greek wrestlers. 

My hands ran over the bodies below me, circling Gregson’s nipples and sliding over Holmes’ musculature. Instinctively, a part of me knew that my flat-mate would allow this amount of touching, though a voice within told me not to caress his colossal cock lest I violate our tacit agreement with one another. How I knew this remained a mystery but I prided myself in starting to understand Holmes’ alien mind and his strange set of rules. Gregson himself was under no such prohibitions and I eagerly watched as he stroked the unimaginable immensity jutting from the grunting gentleman beneath him.

Finally, Gregson cried that his critical period was almost upon him. Here Holmes did a perverse thing and slid his hospitable channel off Gregson’s engorged implement. He tapped at my shoulder and bade me disconnect myself as well, suggesting that the two of us sit side by side upon the couch. At first the direction gave me displeasure, but then Holmes instructed that Gregson bring himself to completion before us so that we could both enjoy the sight. Smiling, I flung myself in a seated position beside Holmes and encouraged Gregson’s routine as well. 

The burly detective needed little encouragement, so close he was to divine bliss. With simian unrestraint he worked his foreskin up and down his shaft, concentrating intently on his final release. Holmes and I relished the recital, each of us stroking enthusiastically at our considerable members, our nearer arms flung around each others’ shoulders, our legs stimulatingly intertwined. My entire spirit was aflame with shameless pleasure, the display of Gregson and Holmes touching themselves sending overpowering elicitations through my brain. No doubt my sixteen-year-old self would be overjoyed about the resounding delights that lay ahead of him. 

For the second time in as many hours, Gregson came, his sticky ejaculate spraying forth and crashing against my hairy chest. With a leonine roar, he shook in pleasure, moving his cock to send the gushing fluid over Holmes as well. While reaching a hand to smear the sultry material upon his trunk, Holmes achieved his own orgasm, the towering derrick of his dick issuing an ungodly amount of viscous semen as he screwed his face in ecstasy. My attainment was not far behind and, though it was my third production today, my bullocks managed to generate an absurd allotment of creamy cum, which drenched us all in a third helping of hedonism. 

Catching his breath, Gregson laughed heartily and leapt into our welcoming laps. He wrapped his arms around both Holmes and I, planting appreciative kisses upon our mouths and bodies. We three soon decided to retire to Holmes’ bed, where we lay and napped, Gregson comfortingly squeezed between us. My hands traced lazily over his figure, occasionally daring to run over Holmes’s naked muscles as well, while I drifted off to sleep.

**Chapter VI: Light in the darkness**

I woke in Holmes’ bed, alone. Shafts of morning light fell upon the wooden parquetry of the floor and I vaguely remembered getting up to relieve myself in the middle of the night. But exactly when the other two men had departed from the lumpy mattress, I couldn’t at the moment recall.

Seated at the breakfast table was Holmes, a silk robe draped over his sturdy shoulders as he sipped tea. Taking the other chair, I found that my flatmate was nude beneath his housecoat, which opened at the front to reveal his burly chest. His large limp organ was visible, slumped to one side in the cleft of his crotch. For some reason I suddenly regretted that I’d taken Gregson in the drawing room—it seemed to bring sexual matters to the forefront of our living arrangement. An uneasy prickle blossomed in my chest; the image of coming home to find Holmes driving his gargantuan instrument once again into a willing man here in our shared space. As to why my feelings fell in this direction, I cannot say. 

With an air of perfect restfulness, Holmes spread butter and jam on a blackened slice of toast. He informed me that Gregson had left just a moment ago, saying that the detective had been rather flustered at the thought of explaining to the men in his office why he had on an identical suit to the one he wore yesterday. 

Giving me a sidelong glance, Holmes added that there had been some additional entertainment during the wee hours of the night. Apparently, he and Gregson had awoken in the darkness with hardened tools and begun kissing wildly. Not wishing to disturb me, they snuck over to my empty bed and gave themselves to one another with passionate enthusiasm. I tried to remain unreactive as Holmes described the incredible sensation of sinking his oversized contrivance into Gregson’s keen and pliable pucker. Busying myself with the teapot, I suppressed a twinge of jealousy at having not been invited to the second act of this performance.

“I thank you for having opened Gregson to these matters,” Holmes said, unexpectedly stroking my wrist with his hand. “I’m certain we will both be heartily received by him at some future date.”

The intimate caress of his fingers didn’t last long. Both Holmes and I pulled our hands back, as if mutually burned by a flame between us, and a moment of silence stretched. 

Holmes smiled. “You provided me with a wonderful reward. After the concert, I spent some time digging into our mystery surrounding Dreber’s ruby ring, and was able to solve almost the entire case.”

I tipped my head in amazement, happy to focus on something other than the embarrassment that we had both just experienced. “Is that so? Well I am eager to hear the conclusion.”

“Ah, but first, my dear Watson, I must explain how it is that I arrived at this most inevitable of deductions. The facts before yesterday had been thus: I’d learned from Lestrade that Drebber and his secretary Strangerson were last seen together at Euston Station about half-past eight on the evening of the third, that is, two days ago. At two in the morning the next day, Drebber had called Scotland Yard, telling them he had come home to find his house burgled. The question which confronted me was to find out how Strangerson had been employed between 8.30 and the time of the supposed crime, and what had become of him afterwards. Now, from my informants at Rache, I had learned that this public appearance had been a sham. The last time Drebber and Strangerson had truly been together was when they both visited the club later that same evening, around 10.30.”

Here I cut in. “So that shrinks the time with which Strangerson is unaccounted for.”

“Indeed,” nodded Holmes. “But even more important was what Strangerson and Drebber had been seen doing at the club Rache—namely, arguing. The other patrons distinctly recall watching the two men have a heated row right there in the middle of the room, with Drebber unable to keep his temper under control at some news that Strangerson had given him. And we know from John Rance what this news item must have been: that Strangerson was re-enamored with his former lover, Jefferson Hope.”

“Following the concert yesterday, I set to work calling upon all the hotels and lodging houses in the vicinity of Rache. You see, I argued that if Drebber and his companion had a great falling out and separated, the natural course for the latter would be to put up somewhere in the vicinity for the night. By eight o’clock I reached Foley’s Private Hotel on Duchess Street. On my inquiry as to whether a Mr. Strangerson was living there, they at once answered in the affirmative.”

“’No doubt you are the gentleman whom he was expecting,’ they said. ‘He had been waiting for a gentleman for two days.’”

“’Had?’ I asked.”

“’Certainly,’ they answered. ‘After waiting in vain, he went off to find the gentleman and hasn’t been seen since.’”

“I asked if the man had left behind anything in his room after absconding and the deskman showed me a single telegram that had been lying upon the floor in his room. It was dated from Cleveland a month ago, and contained the words ‘J.H. is in Europe.’ There was no name appended to this message.”

My brows were becoming crossed at having to pay attention to all the information Holmes was dispensing. “But then it seems you came to a dead end.”

“So thought I!” said Holmes, shooting a finger into the air. “And yet I knew there must be more. Considering once again the ruby ring and what had become of it, I wandered about the area, looking for a jeweler. My initial thought was that Strangerson had decided to sell it.”

“But then he already had it with him, prior to the time of the robbery?”

“Of course, my dear Watson. Drebber had needed an excuse to call the police following the break-in at his house, and the disarray in his bedroom seemed to indicate that a thief had been through it. But it was clear to both you and I that robbery had not been the intent of the intruders. The scene more resembled two companions engaging in sexual congress while the owner was occupied elsewhere.”

“Why would they do so?”

Holmes grinned mischievously. “Revenge,” he said. “What better way to take retribution on the man who treated you poorly for many years than by fucking another in his own bed?”

I had scarcely any time to consider his statement before there was a tap at the door. Much to my astonishment, a fashionably-dressed young man with full lips and high cheekbones introduced himself as Joseph Strangerson. He seemed to be in an agitated state. 

“Please sir,” he said, touching a light brown forelock. “I have the cab downstairs.”

“Very good, very good,” said Holmes, smiling. “The cabman may as well help me with my box. Just ask him to step up.”

I was surprised to find my companion speaking as though he were about to set out on a journey, since he had not said anything about it to me. There was a small portmanteau in the room, and this Holmes pulled out and began to strap. He was busily engaged at it when the cabman entered the room, an olive-skinned, rugged individual, with the long bushy moustache of a Texan. 

“Just give me a help with this buckle,” Holmes said, kneeling over his task. He looked up at me. “Watson, let me introduce you to Mr. Jefferson Hope, the man who will be marrying Mr. Joseph Strangerson in a short while.”

The whole thing occurred in a moment—I could barely process the scene. Holmes’ words and their import floundered in my mind.

“We have the cab,” said Sherlock Holmes. “It will serve to take us all to the club Rache. And now, my good friend, we have reached the end of our little mystery. You are very welcome to put any questions you like to me now, and there is no danger that I will refuse to answer them.” 

**PART II: The Country of Saints**

**Chapter I: On the great alkali plain**

In the central portion of the great North American Continent there lies an arid and repulsive desert, which for many a long year served as a barrier against the advance of civilisation. From the Sierra Nevada to Nebraska, and from the Yellowstone River in the north to the Colorado upon the south, is a region of desolation and silence. Nor is Nature always in one mood throughout this grim district. It comprises snow-capped and lofty mountains, and dark and gloomy valleys. There are swift-flowing rivers which dash through jagged cañons: and there are enormous plains, which in winter are white with snow, and in summer are grey with the saline alkali dust. They all preserve, however, the common characteristic of barrenness, inhospitality, and misery. 

The inhabitants of this land are the Pawnees and Blackfeet, who use it as their hunting grounds, though even the hardiest of braves are glad to lose sight of the awesome plains and find themselves once more upon the prairies. The coyote sulks among the scrub, the buzzard flaps heavily through the air, and the clumsy grizzly bear lumbers through dark ravines, and picks up such sustenance as it can amongst the rocks. 

In the whole world there can be no more dreary view than that from the northern slope of the Sierra Blanco. As far as the eye can reach stretches the great flat plain-land, all dusted over with patches of alkali, and intersected by clumps of the dwarfish chaparral bushes. On the extreme verge of the horizon lie a long chain of mountain peaks, with their rugged summits flecked with snow. In this great stretch of country there is no sign of life, nor of anything appertaining to life. There is no bird in the steel-blue heaven, no movement upon the dull, grey earth—above all, there is absolute silence. Listen as one may, there is no shadow of a sound in all that mighty wilderness; nothing but silence—complete and heart-subduing silence.

It has been said there is nothing appertaining to life upon the broad plain. That is hardly true. Looking down from the Sierra Blanco, one sees a pathway traced out across the desert, which winds away and is lost in the extreme distance. It is rutted with wheels and trodden down by the feet of many adventurers. Here and there, there are scattered white objects which glisten in the sun, and stand out against the dull deposit of alkali. Approach, and examine them! They are bones: some large and coarse, others smaller and more delicate. The former have belonged to oxen, and the latter to men. For fifteen hundred miles one may trace this ghastly caravan route by these scattered remains of those who had fallen by the wayside.

Looking down on this very scene, there stood upon the fourth of May, eighteen hundred and seventy, a solitary traveller. His appearance was such that he might have been the very genius or demon of the region. He was a tall, savage-looking young fellow, mounted on a powerful roan horse, and clad in the rough dress of a hunter, with a long rifle slung over his shoulders. His florid face was lean and haggard, and the brown parchment-like skin was drawn tightly over the projecting bones; his long, brown hair and beard were flecked and dashed with mud; his eyes were sunken in his head, and burned with an unnatural lustre. He dismounted and leaned upon his weapon for support, his tall figure and the massive framework of his bones suggesting a wiry and vigorous constitution. Yet the man was dying—dying from hunger and from thirst.

He was returning east after a fruitless sojourn in the Nevada Mountains prospecting for silver. His labors had come to little, though he had enjoyed an underappreciated position among the men in his encampment—that of a tension reliever for the all-male cortege of miners. Though each had taken their turn with his delicacies, they had at some point grown uncomfortable with indulgences in passions they considered unspeakable. Their shame and disgust at their own desires had led them to rally against the man and so he, after overhearing a plot to dispose of him, had disappeared into the wilderness before anything foul could befall him. 

He had toiled painfully down the ravine, and on to this little elevation, in the vain hope of seeing some signs of water. Now the great salt plain stretched before his eyes, and the distant belt of savage mountains, without a sign anywhere of plant or tree, which might indicate the presence of moisture. In all that broad landscape there was no gleam of hope. North, and east, and west he looked with wild questioning eyes, and then he realised that his wanderings had come to an end, and that there, on that barren crag, he was about to die. “Why not here, as well as in a feather bed, forty years hence,” muttered Jefferson Hope, as he seated himself in the shelter of a boulder.

Alone save his hardy horse, the man had struggled to cross these great and terrible plains in search of salvation. For three days and three nights he had allowed himself neither rest nor repose, searching the barren wilderness for an oasis to give him succor. He was now beyond tired. Slowly his eyelids drooped over his tired eyes, and his head sunk lower and lower upon his breast, until the man slept a deep and dreamless slumber.

Had the wanderer remained awake for another half hour a strange sight would have met his eyes. Far away on the extreme verge of the alkali plain there rose up a little spray of dust, very slight at first, and hardly to be distinguished from the mists of the distance, but gradually growing higher and broader until it formed a solid, well-defined cloud. This cloud continued to increase in size until it became evident that it could only be raised by a great multitude of moving creatures. In more fertile spots the observer would have come to the conclusion that one of those great herds of bisons which graze upon the prairie land was approaching him. This was obviously impossible in these arid wilds. 

As the whirl of dust drew nearer to the solitary bluff upon which the castaway was reposing, the canvas-covered tilts of waggons and the figures of armed horsemen began to show up through the haze, and the apparition revealed itself as being a great caravan upon its journey for the West. But what a caravan! When the head of it had reached the base of the mountains, the rear was not yet visible on the horizon. Right across the enormous plain stretched the straggling array, waggons and carts, men on horseback, and men on foot. Innumerable women who staggered along under burdens, and children who toddled beside the waggons or peeped out from under the white coverings. This was evidently no ordinary party of immigrants, but rather some nomad people who had been compelled from stress of circumstances to seek themselves a new country. There rose through the clear air a confused clattering and rumbling from this great mass of humanity, with the creaking of wheels and the neighing of horses. Loud as it was, it was not sufficient to rouse the tired wayfarer above them.

At the head of the column there rode a score or more of grave ironfaced men, clad in sombre homespun garments and armed with rifles. On reaching the base of the bluff they halted, and held a short council among themselves.

“The wells are to the right, my brothers,” said one, a hard-lipped, clean-shaven man with grizzly hair.

“To the right of the Sierra Blanco—so we shall reach the Rio Grande,” said another.

“Fear not for water,” cried a third. “He who could draw it from the rocks will not now abandon His own chosen people.”

“Amen! Amen!” responded the whole party.

They were about to resume their journey when one of the youngest and keenest-eyed uttered an exclamation and pointed up at the rugged crag above them. From its summit there fluttered a glint of gunmetal grey, showing up hard and bright against the rocks behind. At the sight there was a general reining up of horses and unslinging of guns, while fresh horsemen came galloping up to reinforce the vanguard. The word ‘Redskins’ was on every lip.

“There can’t be any number of Injuns here,” said the elderly man who appeared to be in command. “We have passed the Pawnees, and there are no other tribes until we cross the great mountains.”

“Shall I go forward and see, father,” asked the young man who had spotted the glinting item.

“Leave your horse below and we will await you here, Joseph, my son,” the Elder answered.

In a moment the young fellow had dismounted, fastened his horse, and was ascending the precipitous slope which led up to the object that had aroused his curiosity. He advanced rapidly and noiselessly, with the confidence and dexterity of a practiced scout. The watchers from the plain below could see him flit from rock to rock until his figure stood out against the skyline. He gave out a cry of alarm and threw up his hands, as though overcome with astonishment. 

On the little plateau which crowned the barren hill there stood a single giant boulder, and against this boulder there lay a tall man, long-bearded and hard-featured, but of an excessive thinness. His placid face and regular breathing showed that he was fast asleep. On the ledge of rock above this strange man there stood three solemn buzzards, who, at the sight of the new comer uttered raucous screams of disappointment and flapped sullenly away.

The cries of the foul birds awoke the sleeper who stared about him in bewilderment. The man staggered to his feet and looked down upon the plain which had been so desolate when sleep had overtaken him, and which was now traversed by this enormous body of men and beasts. His face assumed an expression of incredulity as he gazed. “This is what they call delirium, I guess,” he muttered. 

The young scout felt his heart beating fast, though he knew not if it was due to his exertions running up the cliff or for some other reason. He explained to the gaunt man before him that his appearance was no delusion. 

“My name is Jefferson Hope,” the wanderer said. “I was forced from a prospecting party far west of here. Who are you, though?” he continued, glancing with curiosity at his stalwart, sunburned rescuer and then at the long line of waggons on the plain below; “there seems to be a powerful lot of ye.”

“We are the persecuted children of God—the chosen of the Angel Merona,” replied the scout. 

“I never heard tell on him,” said the wanderer. “He appears to have chosen a fair crowd of ye.”

“Do not jest at that which is sacred,” said the other sternly. “We are of those who believe in those sacred writings, drawn in Egyptian letters on plates of beaten gold, which were handed unto the holy Joseph Smith at Palmyra. We have come from Nauvoo, in the State of Illinois, where we had founded our temple. We have come to seek a refuge from the violent man and from the godless, even though it be the heart of the desert.”

The name of Nauvoo evidently recalled recollections to Jefferson Hope. “I see,” he said, “you are the Mormons.”

“We are the Mormons,” answered his companion.

“And where are you going?”

“To Salt Lake City. The hand of God leads us there, following the person of our Prophet.” Great pity rose in the young man’s breast, and the desire to foster this new stranger who appeared so haggard and in need of brotherly love. “You must come with us so that we can nurse you back to health. But if you do, it can only be as a believer in our own creed. We have no wolves among our fold. Will you agree to such terms?”

“Guess I’ll come with you on any terms,” said Hope, with such emphasis that the anxious youth could not restrain a smile.

The young scout took his newfound companion down to the crowds below, who welcomed the starving man and took him before Brother Strangerson, an Elder in their society. He was the father of the youth who had spotted Jefferson Hope and, upon seeing the man, he turned to his son. “Give him food and drink and let it be your task to teach him our holy creed. We have delayed long enough. Forward! On, on to Zion!”

“On, on to Zion!” cried the crowd of Mormons, and the words rippled down the long caravan, passing from mouth to mouth until they died away in a dull murmur in the far distance. With a cracking of whips and a creaking of wheels the great waggons got into motion, and soon the whole caravan was winding along once more. The Elder to whose care the waif had been committed let them to his waggon, where a meal was already waiting for him.

“You shall remain here,” he said. “In a few days you will have recovered from your fatigues. In the meantime, remember that now and for ever you are of our religion. Brigham Young has said it, and he has spoken with the voice of Joseph Smith, which is the voice of God.”

* * * * *

“Plural marriage is intended to diminish the great evil of self-pollution,” said the young Joseph Strangerson, reading from a book as the edges of his ears turned pink.

His companion, Jefferson Hope, looked at the bashful youth with a laconic expression. “Self-pollution, eh? And what is that?”

Strangerson squirmed, a hot feeling that he didn’t understand working its way through his belly. “The sin of young men,” he said, moving down to a whisper. “Abusing themselves.”

Hope, who enjoyed watching his friend’s discomfort, pretended to be thick. “What kind of abuse?”

Strangerson bit his lip, his words emerging sotto voce. “Onanism,” he said. “Masturbation.” His mouth broke out into a crooked smile and the two confidants shared a relieving laugh.

Three years had passed since the Mormon train had saved Jefferson Hope from certain doom in the desert. He had settled with them in broad valley of Utah containing their famed city of Salt Lake. Hope acquired a farm and built himself a substantial log-house. He was a man of practical mind, keen in his dealings and skillful with his hands. His iron constitution enabled him to work morning and evening at improving and tilling his lands. Hence it came about that his farm and all that belonged to him prospered exceedingly. In the intervening years, he was already better off than most of his neighbours and far and wide there was no name better known than Jefferson Hope. In every respect he conformed to the religion of the young settlement, and gained the name of being an orthodox and straight-walking man.

There was one way and only one in which he offended the sensibilities of his co-religionists. No argument or persuasion could ever induce him to set up a female establishment after the manner of his companions. He gave no reason for this persistent refusal, but contended himself by resolutely and inflexibility adhering to his determination. There were some who accused him of lukewarmness in his adopted religion, and others who put it down to greed of wealth and reluctance to incur expenses. Others, though, understood that there was something different about Mr. Hope, and for this reason his remained strictly celibate. 

This quirk of personality gave no bother to Hope’s closest friend among the Mormons, the youth Joseph Strangerson, who had educated and inducted the convert into the ways of his new religion. Strangerson had been but seventeen when the party came upon Hope on the alkali plain, and he had felt an instant connection with the outsider, who was only a few years older than him. Strangerson had never quite fit in with the religious society himself, a fact that gave great consternation to his father, the Elder Strangerson. The young Joseph had been a fey child, lithe and taken to bouts of overexcitement, and his father hoped that the rugged Hope’s taciturn ways would rub off on his son.

The two had certainly spent enough time together in the intervening years, meeting daily for prayers and instructions, often alone in Hope’s well-built domicile. Their keenness for one another never passed into transgressive territory—Hope had learned his lesson from the turncoat miners—though the two men’s conversation always seemed to somehow get caught up in carnal matters.

“So tell me,” said Hope now, his dark eyes catching Strangerson’s shining hazel ones. “Have you any firsthand experience with such things?”

Strangerson turned a deep crimson color and shook his head, unable to even voice the words to a negative response. He looked at his best friend, who had blossomed in health after his rescue, and once again felt the warm stirring in his abdomen. Hope was certainly a striking fellow, his face austere and economical, who seldom took to smiling beneath his feathery moustache. Farm work had given him an imposing frame, with thick and hearty shoulders, though the manner in which he wore his long hair somehow softened him. When looking at Hope, the words of Joseph Smith always came to Strangerson’s mind—how the Prophet had written that male friends “should lie down on the same bed at night locked in each other’s embrace talking of their love.”

Hope, who had spent more than one night in an embrace that would have scandalized Smith, found Strangerson a wonderful friend but also a constant source of temptation. The younger man had delicate features and a simple manner, the barest fuzz of down on his twenty-year-old cheeks. Hope’s sordid thoughts often traced over Strangerson’s gentle lips and tantalizing nape, always wishing that impropriety could be set aside one time and allow him to nuzzle against his modest friend’s figure. But he kept such fantasies locked deep within his breast, knowing the Mormons would be even less forgiving than the frontiersmen of his past. 

The summer heat now pricked the two men as they sat discussing an indecorous subject in Hope’s sweltering household. “Why should this sin of onanism be such an evil?” asked Hope. “Has not the Lord filled men with passion?”

Strangerson, who found it easier when discussions turned on spiritual subjects, straightened up. “Passion is well and good,” he said. “But it must be harnessed in the proper way, for instance turned towards the production and rearing of children, or in devout supplication.”

Hope fixed his companion with a severe look, wondering about the convolutions that went on in the brains of these followers of the Church of Latter-day Saints. “And yet such passion will remain. Trust me, my friend, I have seen more of the world than you.”

The convert frequently spoke about his life before the Mormons, and this intrigued Strangerson with a burning fascination. The younger man wished desperately to know more about life outside his small and secluded people and what the greater society of men contained. 

“What was it like,” asked Strangerson. “Among the cattlemen of the frontier? You’ve said so little to me about that chapter of your life.”

Before trying his luck with the silver lode, Hope had spent a year on a gaucho ranch past the Mexican border. The suntanned ranchers had been sensational and strong-featured, filled with virile machismo that often spilled over into sensuous actions. More than once, Hope had found himself entangled with a group of men grunting in a barn in Spanish at the end of a long day’s work. He had to suppress a rush of blood in his groin as the memories spilled through his mind.

“It was an interesting time,” was all he said to Strangerson’s inquiry. 

The Mormon fidgeted again, wishing that his reserved companion would just for once let slip some of the details that he was so clearly holding back. “But what of passion? You said that it was overflowing among the men…” Strangerson trailed off, realizing he was being too earnest in his eagerness.

A flicker of a grin traced over Hope’s mouth. “Well surely you’ve heard the limerick: Young cowboys have great fear/that studs, once filled with beer/completely addle/would throw on the saddle/and ride them in the rear.”

Strangerson cocked his head to one side, understanding that there was something unseemly about the poem, though not quite comprehending its underlying message. The innocent confusion endeared him to Hope, who wished he could provide a demonstration of the verse to the inexperienced young man. A trickle of sweat traced down his neck and he tugged at the starchy collar that was common among the Mormons. The barest sliver of Hope’s chiseled pectoral muscle became uncovered, causing another bout of distress in Strangerson. 

“Are you saying that more-experienced ranchers would mount their assistants like horses?” asked Strangerson, suppressing his odd feelings. 

“Ah, if only I could explain,” thought Hope. “In a manner,” he said aloud.

“It seems a rather queer practice,” said Strangerson, who felt the hot air suddenly oppressing him.

“Indeed, it is, my friend.”

Just then another young man ran past Hope’s window. “Come,” he shouted. “Brother Hope, Brother Strangerson, we are all going swimming in the river!”

The invite was welcome on such a sweltering day and the two companions quickly bounded after their friend, each glad to untangle themselves from the sticky conversation in the house. At the riverbank, they found a clutch of young men, each around their same age, diving and jostling in the water, and wrestling one another beneath the cool waves. The women knew not to come upon the menfolk in this state, and so the air was casual and unfettered, with all the men stripped down naked as they frolicked in the waters. Hope drank in the sight of the muscular Mormons and their magnificent bodies, taking care not to let his eyes linger on the parts he most desired, their curvaceous buttocks and mouthwatering instruments. He nodded hello to one of the elder statesmen from the city, a Mr. Enoch Drebber, who had decided to join in the nude festivities and was currently sunbathing on the shore. 

Both Strangerson and Hope now doffed their clothing and placed them in a safe space. Though he tried, Strangerson could not force his eyes to turn away from Hope’s limp organ, which seemed to be more inflated than during other previous swim sessions. His gaze also traced over Hope’s incredible physique and the velvety hairs which covered his legs and chest, his masculinity seeming to dwarf Strangerson’s own timid smoothness. Hope tried to disregard his friend’s interest, knowing that it could never lead to anything ameliorative for the two of them. 

At length, they joined the party and splashed with one another in the clear and inviting current. The Mormon youths laughed heartily, having invented a game of slinging river mud at one another and then tussling for dominance in the shallow water. Strangerson watched as a blond baker jumped upon the silt-covered back of a brown-haired companion, the two of them hooting as they fell with a great splash. He grabbed a glob of mud and turned to search for Hope, wishing to peg him with the sludge, but found his constant companion had somehow disappeared. 

Strangerson paddled around between the brawling men, looking high and low for his friend. His explorations took him some way from the others, to a small curve in the river, where he noticed a pair of feet sticking from a reedy patch. A panting noise was emanating from the plants and for a moment Strangerson worried that Hope had hurt himself. But as he came closer, he saw instead that his friend had hauled up on the shore, his nude body writhing agitatedly as Hope did a curious thing. 

Hope had closed his eyes and placed his clenched fist over his rod, which had stiffened to a substantial measure. It stuck straight upward as Hope tugged again and again upon his foreskin, sending the engorged head of his dick out into the naked air. From time to time, Hope would reach up with his other hand to pinch one of his nipples, or send it downward to pull on his hairy nutsack. With dawning awareness, Strangerson realized that this was the action known as masturbation that he had so recently warned his friend against.

Yet rather than cry out and try to stop his companion, Strangerson was entirely entranced by the erotic performance. Hope’s brawny body was tensing in a magnificent manner as he repeatedly abused his hardened tool. The furious pace and determined focus seemed to suggest that Hope was completely engrossed in his exertion. His having taken a daring position here so near to the others indicated that this action had been something he’d had no choice but to indulge in. Silently, Strangerson floated closer, scarcely aware that his own erection was now straining underwater in a turgid display. 

As Hope engaged in his stimulating routine, he squeezed his eyes and played images of the nearby nude young men in his mind. He had been overtaken with emotion at the sights in the river, deeming the pleasure he’d receive greater than the risk he would take giving in to his desires. An imagined scene of unbridled hedonism now entered his brain—that of an orgy breaking out among the young Mormon men in the river, glistening dicks plunging into receptive puckers as they drove their nubile bodies together rhapsodically. During this debauched episode, he would of course induct Strangerson into the methodology of male sensuality. The youth would first be down on his knees with his tender lips squeezed around Hope’s cock and then bent over as Hope thrust his enflamed implement into the younger man’s supple aperture. He imagined the bucking, braying action in raunchy detail, envisioning every aching sensation of the masculine merrymaking.

Hope slipped his fingers up and down his well-proportioned instrument, working himself further and further into a lather. His exploring hands touched the sensitive head, the responsive shaft, the brimming bollocks. His congenial arsehole was crying out for stimulation and soon he took a digit and slipped it an inch or two past his constricted sphincter. He imagined the penetrating probe to be Strangerson’s tongue or perhaps even his member, loosening Hope at the beginning of a fuck session. Strangerson no doubt had a delightful instrument that would press its way into his compartment with eager relish, leading the Mormon youth to heights of pleasure he’d never previously dreamed of. 

It was then that Hope came, shooting forth a viscid dollop of white semen in an arc that covered his chest and face. So lost was he in his randy fantasy that he slathered the ejaculate all over his lips, licking the delectable man-cream and pretending it was Strangerson’s. 

Strangerson himself was completely ensorcelled by the lustful act he was witnessing, his hand instinctively reaching down to tug on his sensitive rod and finding—for the first time in his life—that he was unable to refuse its needs. His hand closed around the shaft and pulled once, twice, three times. His implement was so inexperienced in onanistic strokes that it immediately brought him to the point without return, producing a shuddering orgasm in the young man’s body and sending a cloud of thick seminal liquid into the water. 

Hearing a cry, Hope opened his eyes with fright. He looked up but found nobody in the vicinity. Embarrassed beyond belief, Strangerson had immediately ducked beneath the surface and was now shimming away back toward the group, hoping he would never have to discuss the events that had just occurred with anybody. 

**Chapter II: Awakening the desire within**

Strangerson avoided his friend Hope for some days after this episode, unable to face the convert following his intrusive eavesdropping among the reeds. Not understanding the reason for this sudden change in their relationship, Hope took to moping about his house, emerging infrequently to wander about the city with a brooding expression. His neighbours comprehended that something was amiss, and gossip spread throughout the town. 

Strangerson himself had grown despondent, torn between competing desires to confess to his friend what he had witnessed and the wish to simply forget about the entire immoral episode. He remained in his room with the shudders shut, languishing in his bed throughout the day. Seeing his dejection, Joseph Strangerson’s parents decided to take action. 

“My son,” said his father, coming into his room one day. “Your mother and I have decided it is time that you should marry. Would you not say that the dear Lucy Ferrier who lives down the street is a beauty?”

The unhappy youth could make no sense of his father’s question, so lost was he in his misery. He merely raised his head from his pillow and told the Elder Strangerson that he no longer cared what happened to him. At this declaration, his father realized that his son must be in a sorry state indeed, and that nuptial arrangements would have to secured as quickly as possible. 

A few more days passed and the Elder Strangerson returned to his son’s room. “Joseph, my boy, the Ferrier family has agreed that the two of you would make a fine match. What do you say to that?”

Young Strangerson lifted his head once more. “What do you mean, father?”

“You and Lucy shall be wed, and not a moment should go to waste. The ceremony can take place tomorrow!”

Realization dawned upon Strangerson now. His eyes grew wide as he leapt from his repose. Without another word to his father, he ran from the room, his feet carrying him out into the crepuscular dusk and straight to Jefferson Hope’s house, where he knocked upon the door. At the sight of his friend returning to him, Hope’s heart filled with joy. But he remained on guard as soon as he saw that Strangerson was panting, clearly worked up into some extreme emotional state. The two men gazed at one another across the threshold, each unable to utter a single sentence. 

“Come in,” said Hope after a short spell. “Pray tell me what is on your mind, my friend.”

Strangerson entered, a cavalcade of pronouncements fighting in his mind. He wished to tell Hope about his family’s plans but the words continuously failed to reach his tongue. Hope offered him a seat at the kitchen table and then brought the young man a cup of hot Mormon tea, which helped invigorate the youth and order his convoluted thoughts. 

“I saw you,” said Strangerson. “At the river. A few days ago.”

Though he immediately understood what Strangerson was referring to, Hope’s reticent face betrayed no emotion. He merely looked at his friend and said that he had been caught up in a moment of weakness. He told Strangerson to erase it from his mind.

“If only I could,” thought Strangerson, though he knew those images would forever be burned into the deepest parts of his soul. “There’s more,” he said. “I was so overtaken by what I saw that I polluted myself, then and there.”

Hope’s feelings went out to the poor boy, so confused and ashamed at his actions. He wanted to caress his friend’s chestnut hair and tell him that there was nothing unclean about his experience. In fact, it was good and natural that he should encounter such emotions. 

“It is no matter,” Hope said. “Place yourself at ease. There are urges that men can not control.”

Strangerson gazed at his friend, who was so wise in his ways. Beneath his tough exterior, Strangerson knew that Hope harbored a gentle and caring compassion for the world. Despite his odd manners, the convert was more of a true Christian than many he’d known in his community. 

“And now,” said Strangerson, casting his eyes downward, “I am to be wed to Miss Lucy Ferrier.” 

Hope winced, as if wounded, but managed to speak in an even voice. “That is good. Marriage is a great sacrament among your—that is, our people. Are you not happy?”

Strangerson appeared to be on the verge of tears. “I am quite happy. How could I be otherwise?”

Seeing his friend’s joylessness, Hope reached out and took Strangerson’s hand in his own. The electric touch of their fingers caused a dual twinge in each man’s chest. “It is simply…” stammered Strangerson. “I wish that I could see the world. It seems to contain such wondrous things, and I have been confined here to our small corner of life. Tell me, Jeff, tell me about your adventures elsewhere.”

Hope looked away, his eyes falling into shadow. “What would you care to know?”

Perhaps due to his friend’s tender contact, Strangerson felt a demon beginning to crawl through his body. A rush of blood was working its way into his lower regions and he was suddenly swept up with a bold curiosity. “Where did you learn to do that—that thing?” he said. “Touching yourself, that is.”

Hope could have laughed at the naiveté of this Mormon youth. “It is an action that comes instinctually to all men. In certain places, we are taught to suppress it but in other societies it is considered a trivial matter.”

This information created bewilderment in Strangerson’s brain. “But why did you engage in such a deed, there on the shoreline?”

This was something Hope had wished not to be asked. But he gave in to his friend’s inquisitiveness. “I was aroused beyond measure. It was not something I could help.”

“Aroused by what? The gentle natural spring?”

Hope could see that there was no use hiding the truth from his friend any longer. “It was not nature herself that stirred me, but rather the sight of other men, cavorting and playing with one another in the nude.” 

“But why should that give you such agitations, my friend?”

“Because that is the manner of my attraction—towards persons of my own sex.”

A bolt of insight so powerful now overtook young Strangerson. It was as if the sky had broken open above his head, and suddenly he saw the world with eyes anew. How many times had his friend Hope referred obliquely to some encounter whose details remained obscure? Why was there always an air of tension and anticipation when the two of them were together? How was it that he had he not noticed these things before?

Strangerson released a great exhalation. “How long have you known of this attraction?”

The convert paused, wondering how much of himself to reveal to the youth. But there was no use with a masquerade anymore. He decided to tell Strangerson everything and then quit this city, never to return. 

“Since I was a young boy, I have felt the stirring in my loins when with close male companions. At first, I took the sensation as indication of my great love and friendship for them but at some point I realized that it meant more. I became distraught after this recognition, and filled with anger. Back at home in Chicago, I was a terror, picking fights with other boys in the street and letting loose great mischief upon the world. My parent eventually wished to be rid of me, and so I headed out west to seek my fortune.”

“Though a strapping young lad of eighteen, I had no money and no plans and soon found myself lost in the wilderness, having neglected to plot out a true course in my journey. It is possible that I simply wished to obliterate myself and never have to face my terrible feelings. While disoriented and malnourished in the woods one day, I was saved by a band of natives, who took me back to their village and accepted me into their tribe. We call them the Sioux, though among their people they are known as the Lakota.”

“The tribesmen took me to their healer, a hearty person with the build of an ox who wore the dress of a Lakota woman. As this healer undertook their ministrations, I came to understand that the shaman was in fact a man, or rather what the Indians called a winkté—a male who has a compulsion to behave as a female. His name was Napayshni Matoskah, meaning ‘courageous white bear.’”

“Napayshni brought me back from the brink in more ways than one. As I lay in his teepee, stripped of my clothing, he engaged in some sort of ceremony to drive out evil spirits, waving a smoking bundle of a local plant over my body. Napayshni himself wore naught but a loincloth for this particular ceremony. I must tell you, my friend, that though he was considered womanly by his tribe, this healer was masculine beyond compare. His legs were thick and sinewy, his arms bulging with strength. His skin was dark as fertile loam, his body expansive and brawny, like that of a powerful stag. Looking at him, I could not help but feel an aching desire in my manhood.”

“Napayshni had given me some concoction to help with the healing and the world around me seemed dreamlike. Through the smoke, he smiled at me with his beautiful face. His cheeks were sharp as obsidian stones, the braids of his hair swaying gently as he sang a song of prayer. It was then and there that I began to fall in love with him.”

“The love was clearly more than brotherly for now my organ began to rise. So entranced was I that at first I did not realize that my implement had taken on a life of its own. It was only when the straining tug pulled on my pelvis that I realized how rigid I had become. Embarrassment spread through my chest, but Napayshni seemed unperturbed. With practiced care, he spit on his hand and reached forward his arm. His palm encircled my cockhead and, as he continued singing, he pulled at my stiffness.”

“The sensation was rapturous, so overwhelming to me to feel another man pleasuring my extremity that I gave not even a second thought to doubts or reservations. Napayshni worked with accomplished grace, sending me into convulsions of pleasure as his fingers danced over my rigidity. He knew how to drive me forward toward the erotic edge of orgasm, only to pull back at the last moment and let my sensual energy recede enough to delay my outburst. His digits caressed my swollen testes, tenderly rubbing the base of my shaft and stroking me toward paradisiacal ecstasy.” 

“His own fervor must have been aroused by these actions for, at one point, he undid the clasp of the cloth covering his crotch. Out sprang his own erect implement, towering over my head like a fine oaken club. His piece was immense, as was befitting a man so large as himself, and the reflexes of my characters told me what I must do. A voice in my head said simply: ‘Allow your desire to overtake you.’”

“The curved dome of his lusciousness slipped past my lips and I was like a man taking his first taste of whiskey. The flavor was heady and restorative, with an undertone of salt that somehow mesmerized me and bade me take him further into my maw. The experienced healer knew precisely how much of his protuberance he could proffer, filling my mouth with his hardness but stopping short of rendering things uncomfortable for me. My own member was inflamed beyond measure by this point, especially as he continued to stroke it with all his talents and skills.”

“My passions were so provoked that I rested my hand on his solid buttocks and tried to press him further into my throat. I wished for nothing more than to drink every inch of his dick, to feel it slide in and out of my fore-end until nothing remained of living beyond this incredible feeling. Napayshni had unleashed my true nature—that of a cock-hound—and I had to give in to the desperate cravings that had long remained hidden within me. The healer laughed at my eagerness and prevented me from impaling myself too far. After some continued stimulation, he began to issue sounds that made me understand an offering was on its way.”

“As he tugged at my tool, Napayshni thrust his pelvis back and forth over my head, driving his enormity into my oral compartment. Entranced, I accepted the incursion, all the while feeling the bliss radiate from both my engorged instrument and my overstuffed face. Perhaps the concoction Napayshni fed me had heightened my awareness but it seemed as if my entire body were filled with light, a warm and cleansing glow that flashed with every color of the spectrum. From somewhere above me, I heard the healer grunt and out of his implement a bountiful cascade of intoxicating semen burst forth. I swallowed every drop of his potency, the pungent taste of his nectar driving me to new heights of ardor.”

“I came and came and came, issuing more ejaculatory fluid than I had ever or since, the warm mass inundating the two of us with its creamy spray. Napayshni fished his gigantic implement from my mouth and brought his body down next to mine. While whispering sweet indecipherable pronouncements in my ear, he hugged me close with his bear-like embrace, the curative intimacy changing me forever.”

Here Hope stopped his narrative and looked up at his friend Strangerson, whose eyes were lit with a bright flame of candlelight. Though his heart beat fast in his chest, the convert felt utterly becalmed, as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He knew now that it did not matter what reaction he received, the telling of the tale had already been restorative to his constitution. 

Strangerson licked his lips, his spirit a whirl of conflicting emotions. “Please,” he said, “tell me what happened next.”

Startled, Hope wondered how his friend had known that there was more to this story. But seeing that Strangerson would not be satisfied to end things here, he began again to speak of his time with the Lakotas. 

“Napayshni continued to practice his healing arts upon me, both of the conventional and the masculine variety and soon I was quite rehabilitated. The two of us spent a great deal of time alone in his teepee. He allowed me to indulge in his dick as often as I cared, my abilities at swallowing his immensity growing with each passing day. He took me into his own mouth as well, and I learned the pleasure of being sucked by a knowledgeable practitioner of male passion. He was caring and open-hearted and though we shared no common language, I felt as close to him as any man.”

“The Indians accepted me into their tribe without question, teaching me how to hunt and survive as they did upon the plains. They dressed me in their clothes and let me partake in their ceremonies. I picked up a rudimentary understanding of their tongue, which brought me closer to Napayshni as well as his people. Of our relationship no one seemed bothered. In fact, it appeared to be the most natural sort of thing among the Lakota, that a man and another man could be lovers. With Napayshni occupying the role of a winkté, the tribesmen considered me to be the masculine one, despite the fact that my companion was clearly larger and more strongly-built than me.”

“My bodily explorations with Napayshni never went farther than oral inducements, though I knew in theory that there were other actions we could engage in. But I was too shy to ask and Napayshni seemed to be waiting for something, some maturity within me that I had yet to master.”

“One night as I returned from a hunt with the other warriors, I opened the flap to Napayshni’s teepee and found a shocking sight. Another white man was within, thrusting himself into Napayshni. The stranger donned the hat and bandana of a cowboy but was otherwise entirely nude. He wore a wooly beard and his chest was bursting with burly chest hairs, his proportions as thick and well-developed as Napayshni’s, who crouched on his hands and knees beneath the man. The two of them howled with effort and pleasure.” 

“The cowboy seemed further fueled by my appearance, his rollicking insertions and exertions picking up pace until he cried ecstatically and emptied his ejaculate into my companion. The fluid must have been abundant as it crowded Napayshni’s compartment and came dripping out his aperture onto the floor. It seemed that the Indian had already come, as the saturation mingled with a dollop of white material that was beneath the two men. The cowboy kissed and thanked Napayshni, tipping his hat as he strode past me and out into the cool night air, his hide as bare as the skins covering the tent.” 

“A hot sting of discomfort filled my breast. Though I didn’t know it at the time, this was the emotion known as jealousy. I ran from the teepee before Napayshni could rouse from his orgasmic state, seeking succor in the wild night. With tears in my eyes, I lay upon the grass and gazed up at the soft light of the moon. Soon, I heard a voice crying my name—it was Napayshni searching for me. He stood over me and asked if I would return with him to the tent, so that he could render an explanation for what had just occurred.”

“Though I wished he would leave me alone, so great was my love for Napayshni that I agreed to follow his lead. Alone in his teepee once more, my companion tried to clarify several things to me. He said he had met the cowboy many years ago and that the man passed through the village from time to time. Napayshni enjoyed his company and his cock, and told me he had several other lovers, including a Frenchmen trapper, a Russian merchant, and even Indians from different tribes. He tried to explain the complexity of these interdependent relationships but our mutual vocabulary was not up to the task of what he wished to convey.”

“Seeing that I was still unsatisfied, he took my hand and looked into my eyes. ‘I have a great amount of love,’ he said. ‘And, for me, love must be free.’”

“At this, I broke down and began once again to cry. I pressed my face into his chest as he hugged me close with his great arms. I told him I had a great deal of love as well, and that I wished him all the happiness he wanted. I understood that the manner and immensity of his love meant he could never be contained by one person. I merely hoped he could share it with me.”

“Napayshni smiled and said that he certainly loved me more than the rest. But he had been wary of letting me get too close to him for he knew that these other lovers would eventually come calling and that he would have to explain his complex circumstances to me. He had been unsure how I would react to the news.”

“’Is that why we have not yet engaged in the practice that you did with that other man?’ I asked.”

“Napayshni nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I thought you might not be ready for it.’”

“I gazed back at him, feeling a tight squeeze in the inner parts of my buttocks. ‘I am ready,’ I said.”

“Lust now made itself known in the form of a swelling at my crotch. In my mind, I knew that I wanted nothing more than to practice the labors I had witnessed earlier between Napayshni and the cowboy. The idea of my companion’s large cock stroking its way inside me seemed among the most inciting scenes I could imagine. Seeing my desire, Napayshni pulled me down on the soft furs of his bed and soon we cooed together naked, each of our virilities rising as our limbs entwined in a delicate embrace.” 

“We rolled around together in love, our growing attraction more evident by the minute. Napayshni licked my earlobes and my neck. He brought his mouth down upon one of my nipples, causing me to throw my head back with a beatific cry. My hands caressed the contours of his hips, his abdomen, and his chest, each sturdy muscle pulsing with energy. Our bodies rubbed against one another in procreative passion and Napayshni took both our hardnesses into his hand, squeezing our dicks together in his palm.”

“The fricative pleasure of my largest erogenous zone pressed against his was a marvelous sensation. Our cockheads poked out from their respective foreskins, dripping with pre-ejaculatory fluid, appearing and disappearing like prairie dogs on the plains. I marveled that Napayshni was already stiff again after having been so recently with another and swelled at the sight of his enormous appendage. While kissing and holding me close, Napayshni reached around with his other hand and delicately pressed a finger on my trembling pucker. He bade me do the same to him and I acceded, my palm hugging one of his rugged buttocks as my fingertips brushed against his hole. In a husky voice, Napayshni urged me to apply greater pressure. Without warning, the end of my longest digit slipped into his still-wet compartment.”

“My eyes bulged at this surprise, though Napayshni seemed to have expected it. As he continued grinding our implements together, he twitched open and closed his rearmost aperture, allowing my finger to slip in and out. I realized that he was showing me with his body what to do with my own. Feeling the force of his hand on my sphincter, I tried to follow his lead, though it seemed easier to tighten rather than loosen the ring. Napayshni laughed and kissed me again, telling me it would take practice to master these motions.”

“He now took some of the seminal fluid issuing from our instruments and smeared it on his fingers. With one hand, he pried apart my butt cheeks and rested his other hand upon my constricted pucker. The lubrication seemed to ease his ingress and this time I was able to relax the requisite amount for his digit to dive a short way into my antechamber. An electric thrill coursed through my hips, causing the rate of leaking from my engorged cockhead to increase considerably. Napayshni understood that I had achieved an important milestone, giggling and hugging me close to his chiseled physique. He instructed me to push my finger deeper inside him, which I did so rather easily. His compartment had after all been recently stretched by another man’s dick and this thought bountifully multiplied my passion.”

“My finger slowly disappeared into his snug vestibule, and with each inch he followed my lead by incurring his digit slightly farther inside me. There was a slight pinprick of pain as he did so but Napayshni was a healer—he would not allow me to experience discomfort from his backdoor explorations. He paused whenever I cried out, reaching to re-lubricate his hand with our sensual emanations. Quite soon, I was rather loosened and he was able to slide his finger in and out of my slot with remarkable effortlessness, the exotic sensation pushing me to incredible new vistas of delight.” 

“Napayshni now rolled atop me, his weighty frame pressing down on mine with a pleasant pressure. He shifted about, reaching over to a calabash sitting by his bed. This vessel contained a natural emollient that he used in his shamanic arts but which also served another purpose. After pouring out a glob of the slick material upon his palm, he placed his hand on his aperture and stuck one of his fingers into his slit, moaning as he did so. My own finger was still lodged inside him and our combined efforts succeeded in stretching his sphincter further than before. I did not understand the purpose of this action, telling him that I wished for him to enter me.”

“He looked down at me and winked. ‘Soon, my love.’”

“Napayshni crouched over me, his muscled legs as sturdy as tree trunks. He squatted down into a low position, aiming my stiff instrument straight upward. My engorged erection sank swiftly into the mountainous mounds of his rump, entering the inviting crack and quickly disappearing into his enchanting opening. The radiating sensations, so novel and delightful, nearly overwhelmed me with their infinite blessedness. I grunted and shouted without regard to anything else, feeling like a man experiencing the holiest of holies. Napayshni accommodated my article with adept fluency, driving himself all the way down until I was fully inside him.”

“Though he the penetrated one, Napayshni was completely in control of our sexual session, bouncing up and down on my dick and howling with utter abandon, his body beautiful and divine. The experience of my member sliding in and out of his tight pucker was incredible while the sight of his gigantic cock springing about and leaking a steady stream of fluid brought me to untamed vistas of delight. This was apparently Napayshni’s intention for he stopped just before I reached my orgasm and pulled his body off mine.”

“Returning to my side, he smeared his hand in unguent and easily slipped a finger inside me. His amatory actions had served to inflame my passions to a burning pitch and my rear was now rather relaxed as a consequence. His declared me ready to receive his grand implement. I was in such a frenzied state that I could hardly process his words, entreating him to just fuck me already.” 

“Napayshni covered his enormity in lubricant and cupped my buttocks with his steady palms. While crouching below me, he pulled up my hips and then slowly lowered them down over his crotch. Remembering the training he had just given me, I unfastened my aperture just as his member touched the responsive opening. His colossal cockhead began to stretch my pucker. The sensation of my hole giving way to his enormous member is one that I will relish for the remainder of my life. I still bring it to mind when pleasuring myself alone at night.”

“My compartment accommodated Napayshni’s rigid titan like a sheath slipping over a steel implement. As his article lodged its way into my inner recesses, my awareness slipped into a condition that words can scarcely describe. I seemed to float above my own body, watching the sexual proceedings and their beautiful effect upon me. Napayshni’s burly frame filled the room with its power, caressing me, stretching me, driving into me, and stuffing me with his virility. Out of my dick a geyser of semen unexpectedly erupted.”

“Napayshni’s eyes widened at this fluidic display and he asked if I was alright. Returning now to my normal state of mind, I nodded my head and told him to please continue. I could see the arousal in his expression as he raised an impressed eyebrow and began to buck like a wild stallion. My pliant hole easily took his uninhibited hammering and I became suffused with erotic contentment. I had mastered these masculine arts rather quickly, and I knew that for the rest of my days I would require an agreeable companion who could give to me what Napayshni was giving.” 

“His titanic implement dove in and out of my aperture, causing my own member to rise once again. Napayshni’s broad chest pressed against mine as he came forward to kiss me, raising my legs high into the air. Changing the angle of his delightful ingresses also seemed to cause a doubling of its ecstatic effect. I didn’t know it then but Napayshni was hitting my prostate, a sensitive button inside every man’s tunnel that can greatly multiply his pleasure. I cried with joy and locked my legs around his back, petitioning him to pound me ever more.”

“My sweat-covered partner now conducted an acrobatic act, scooping me up in his arms as he drew himself into a standing position. He cradled my buttocks as I wrapped my hands around his neck, feeling his massive cock drive into my exposed pucker while I uttering euphoric declarations. To be entirely under his control as he directed his erection into me was an incredible inducement toward ever higher realms of pleasure. Napayshni grunted like a warrior, his athletic prowess evident at each turn of our carnal session.”

“Seeing how stimulated I was, he next took me down on the ground, bidding me to crouch on my hands and knees while he slammed into me from behind. He sent the thick pole of his appendage deep into my eager slot, plunging all the way down to his base before withdrawing completely. The momentary vacancy caused me to inhale with unbridled delight, followed by the stunning sensation of Napayshni re-stretching my aperture with his considerable member. I pressed my face down to the furs on the floor, arching my butt high into the air to facilitate his actions. At some point, he slipped himself fully inside me again, held onto my back, and used the leverage to pound my pucker with formidable force.” 

“Scooping an arm under my chest, Napayshni pulled me towards him and kissed me as he continued his incursions. With his other hand, he reached around and slipped his clenched fist over my implement. Each gyration of his hips now pulled my sensitive foreskin down over my cockhead, provoking my passions and causing my eyes to roll backwards like a man under the influence of some wonderful enchantment. The symphonic sensation was too much for me and, then and there, I came again, achieving an orgasm that caused my entire being to shudder to its core.”

“The twitching of my compartment must have been too much for Napayshni, for now he lowed like a bison and began to shoot into my vestibule. He thrust farther than before as the copious ejaculate engulfed my antechamber with its flood of bliss. I could feel his emanations dribbling out and down my leg. After six or seven pulses, he completed his amatory operation and collapsed his bulk down atop me. I fell asleep with his arms wrapped tight around me.”

Strangerson glared at his companion, feeling that a new connection had grown between them. His buttocks were slick with sweat inside his pants and his erection had been straining against the fabric throughout Hope’s detailed description. He asked his friend what became of his relationship with Napayshni.

“We eventually went our separate ways,” said Hope, his eyes downcast in remembrance. “It was for the best. He was a singular man and I needed to explore love beyond the confines of the tribe.”

Seeing the effect of this painful recollection on his dear friend’s face, Strangerson came forward. He stroked Hope’s stubbled cheek with a finger, causing Hope to look up in his eyes. A moment of high tension strung between the two of them. 

Hope drove himself upright and brought his lips to Strangerson’s, who received the tender kiss. The men embraced one another tightly, giving in to their mutual desires, finally let loose from rigid social conventions. A fearful emotion pressed in Strangerson’s breast—the worry of what his Mormon family would think. But the dread was soon buried beneath the realization that, no matter what happened next, he would never be able to relinquish Hope again. For his part, Hope swelled with happiness that he and his best friend were able to show one another the true depth of their love. 

Strangerson hugged his frame against Hope’s, wishing that by force he could almost merge the two of them together. He wanted to feel every inch of his friend’s physique against his own. The thrilling sensation of Hope’s body even through his clothing was already a greater joy than the young Mormon had heretofore experienced in his life. Hope’s lips against his as they pressed together their faces was a tangible reminder that such contact was among the greatest parts of human existence. 

“Please,” said Strangerson. “I want to feel you.”

Hope could have smiled at this endearing entreaty. Though Strangerson’s words were as yet immature, he knew what his companion desired. As he continued kissing his friend, he began to undo the buckles of both of their belts. Within seconds, their pants and underwear were around their ankles, and their members each sprang free. Strangerson gasped when Hope’s rigid erection smacked against his bare thigh, a phenomenon he could have scarcely imagined happening just a few short days ago. 

Hope now took a firm grasp of Strangerson’s knob and gave the head a gentle squeeze. He wanted to ease his companion into this new world of male lovemaking, so as not to cause him too much bewilderment at his earliest experience. Based on the rapid intakes of breath coming from the young Mormon, his actions were greeted successfully. Strangerson felt a pulsating warm spread from his stiffened instrument into his body and his reflexes bade him forward for another soft kiss from his friend. His own hand curled around Hope’s tool—how its weight and magnitude felt in his palm!—and mimicked the movements of his companion.

Freed from their constraints, the two men took to caressing each other’s bare buttocks, running their hands up one another’s backs, and pressing their legs together earnestly. Their existence became a riot of touch and smell and taste as they took to exploring their bodies with every extremity they could press into service. Hope moved around his young friend’s frame and embraced him from behind. His hardened implement slipped comfortably between Strangerson’s rounded butt cheeks and he heard his companion give a cry of surprise and delight. 

Still wishing not to move to fast and yet desperately needing to give in to his long-held yearning, Hope dropped to his knees and began to lick Strangerson’s downy rear. He heard whimpering come from his friend and decided to proceed. With his tongue, he ran a line up and down Strangerson’s tender crack, stoking the virgin’s desires. Strangerson felt his head awhirl with unbelievable passion, which only grew stronger when Hope’s lingual exploration served to sever apart his cheeks and the convert’s tongue came to rest atop his aching aperture. 

The two men paused here, each scarcely believing the reality of their positions. Hope could have never explained to Strangerson at a point earlier in their friendship that the stimulation of one man’s hole with another man’s tongue was a suitable exploit. Strangerson would certainly have balked at the suggestion. The Mormon youth had never dreamed that such a feat would bring a man satisfaction and assuredly not the profuse pleasure that was currently radiating from his posterior. His pucker twitched with uncontrollable delight as the wet stimulus licked its way around his delicate orifice. 

Hope could feel his friend’s emanating desire, taking great care to work slowly and methodically on Strangerson’s rear. He nuzzled his nose between the bouncing butt-cheeks, snaking his tongue from the base of the Mormon’s bullocks to the top curve of his backend and then repeating the action with zeal. Strangerson grunted from the effort, feeling his pucker loosening and giving way to Hope’s probing tongue. Hope managed to slip his explorations a short way into his friend’s delectable channel, savoring the elated cries issuing from Strangerson’s mouth. 

“You should fuck me,” Strangerson whispered, surprising them both. Hope came up and kissed his companion’s neck, telling the youth that such an act was not to be entered into lightly. It took practice and care, even with experience. 

But Strangerson was resolute. Having listened to his friend’s back and forth regarding Napayshni, he felt that he could accommodate a short trial—the scandalous actions of men and the pleasure they could bring was all he could think about now. Hope was rather enflamed himself and did not take too long deliberating in his mind before deciding that feeling Strangerson’s sphincter slowly swallowing his stiffened tool would not be a bad sensation. 

Hope got back on his knees and pressed his tongue once again to Strangerson’s hole. Between licks he explained that the Mormon’s aperture would need to be properly stimulated before it could be induced to partake in the activities they both desired. Feeling himself unravel, Strangerson accepted the blissful encouragement. Hope’s incredible tongue was certainly not a bad precursor to the main event. As the convert continued, Strangerson sensed a change coming over him—no longer would he be a timid child. Today, he was becoming a full-grown man. 

After the requisite motivating period, Hope rose and grabbed a bottle of olive oil from his kitchen cabinet. He returned to find Strangerson bent over the kitchen table, proudly displaying his aching opening like a wanton prostitute. Strangerson had slipped two fingers into his slit, pumping them back and forth to show his friend how amenable he would be to their sexual encounter. The sight fueled Hope’s cravings to a feverish level and he quickly dolloped his dick with lubrication.

Hope looked down at Strangerson’s arse as he tapped his instrument upon the eager crack. He was overcome with the thought that he was about to be fucking his best friend, here after years of pent up longing. Arching his butt in the air, Strangerson knew that they were about to embark on an excursion that would last forever. He was in love with Hope and no one else would ever provide him the same passion. 

Hope leaned down and kissed his companion’s back as he aimed his cockhead at the tight access point. It gave way with nary a moment’s hesitation. Strangerson felt his aperture open up to the delightful pleasure of his friend’s hard rod, its bountiful proportions sliding into him with ease. He cried with elation as Hope coaxed inch after inch deeper inside his virgin cavity. Hope could scarcely believe how obliging the young Mormon’s compartment was, and he moaned with unrestrained gratification. Instinctively, he began to buck back and forth. 

The two men did what came to them naturally, their erotic display one enjoyed by men since time immemorial. Stangerson, the penetrated one, felt his body opening into a higher realm of spiritual satisfaction as his friend’s considerable implement slid in and out of his tight chute. Hope conducted his actions with expert ability, making sure that his incursions satisfied his companion’s innermost cravings, rubbing his engorged cockhead against the point of Strangerson’s prostate, causing both of them to moan and grunt like wild dogs. 

But even if their noisy session had not been audible well across town, it was unfortunately doomed from the start. For the neighbors had seen young Strangerson enter the house hours earlier and, suspicious, had alerted the relevant authorities. At that moment, Strangerson’s parents had gathered at Hope’s doorway with the other elders of the city. Hearing the terrifying din within, the crowd clustered at the door and forced it from its hinges. The sight before them nearly caused a riot. 

Shocked, embarrassed, and utterly destroyed, Hope and Strangerson could do nothing to hide the tryst they were now engaged in. Hope tried to think of an explanation but knew there was nothing that could be believable. The Mormon’s parent grabbed their son and pulled him from beneath his lover. Tears slid down Strangerson’s face as he struggled against the townspeople, his arms reaching out to Hope, who strained to hold onto his friend. 

“Joseph!” Hope cried. 

Once, Strangerson had been dragged away, his father turned to Hope. “You pervert,” he shouted at the convert, who had fallen into a despondent heap on the floor. 

“I’m sorry,” said Hope between ragged sobs. “Just let me tell him that I’m sorry.”

The elder Strangerson spit on him. “You will never see my son again.”

**Chapter III: A continuation of the reminiscences of John Watson, M.D.**

Sherlock Holmes stood upon a dais between Mr. Jefferson Hope and Mr. Joseph Strangerson in front of a packed crowd at the club Rache. All three men wore suits of the finest cut and make, and each was brimming with happiness. Hope and Strangerson clasped hands between them, their eyes wet with tears, matching ruby rings slipped upon their fingers, as Holmes closed his Bible. 

“Should anyone here object to this union…” Holmes said with a mischievous smile plastered to his face. “Then please do shut up about it for nobody cares.”

The men of the establishment duly laughed, a hearty communal sound that cut through the sentimentality we all were feeling at watching the proceedings before us. Hope and Strangerson’s love had filled us each with pride and delight, and seeing the two of them partake in the trappings of matrimony made my heart swell. It didn’t matter that their ceremony was not legally binding. It didn’t matter that I could never have imagined the sight of a man marrying another man a few short months ago. The only thing that was important was their proclamation of everlasting love to one another here before this exalted community. 

The vows had been said, the rings exchanged. Holmes stated that, while he was certainly no man of the cloth, he had been inside of one not too long ago, and therefore wondered if some of that man’s priestly powers had been transferred to him. 

“In any case, I declare you married,” he said, beaming. “You may now kiss one another.”

And so they did, to much excited whooping and hollering from the crowd.

Later, I stepped away from the small dancing floor, my muscles sore from hours of merrymaking, my brain lubed up with great amounts of beer. I had been cavorting with the rest of the men as a banjo and squeezebox played entertaining tunes. Many in the crowd were sweaty and beginning to disrobe. Needing a moment to myself, I took a seat at the sidelines.

Sherlock Holmes came over, his tie already loosened, his jacket gone, and placed his hand on my knee as he sat down beside me. “Are you having fun, my friend?” he asked.

I told him I was having a wonderful time and was quite glad that he was able to arrange these nuptial proceedings. “But could we please go over the particulars of the case? I don’t think I quite understood how you managed to solve it.”

His eye twinkled and for a moment it seemed he might hold back. But instead he leaned forward and suggested I resolve the details myself. When I told him there was no way for me to do such a thing, he simply smiled and asked me to state the final facts as I knew them.

“There was the ring,” I said. “Which was purported to be stolen, though you quickly deduced that this was merely a cover story. Yet Strangerson, who was the secretary of Enoch Dreber, had the ring with him in the end.” A bolt flashed in my mind and I realized there was an easy conclusion to make from this information. “Which means that Strangerson must have had the ring with him the whole time, even before the alleged robbery.”

The light of Holmes’ grin shone with an approving gleam. “I told you that my tricks were not so hard as they initially seem. A short time with me and you are already becoming quite the detective yourself.”

Yet there was still a great deal I was missing and so Holmes gave in to my entreaties and explained the gaps in my knowledge. Strangerson, it seems, held his secretarial position with Mr. Drebber because the elder man was supposed to be a great expert in the reeducation of wayward youths. Specifically, Drebber specialized in taking boys with errant desires and leading them toward the path of righteousness. That he himself was as crooked as any of his pupils was hardly an unexpected turn of events, and many boys suffered from his mixed messaging and guilt. 

Strangerson had been with him the longest, the two eventually finding something like romance between them, in spite of Drebber’s perpetual shame and his long-suffering wife. Drebber even slipped his secretary a ruby ring he’d once bought as a gift for his wife, conferring it to Strangerson as a token of his companionship. Yet in his heart, Strangerson knew that Drebber was incapable of loving him, and that their relationship was wrong. Not only because Drebber was married, but because he was constantly plotting with the Mormon elders to keep him far away from the convert who had, in their eyes, soiled him. Yet Strangerson never lost hope that he might see the beloved from his youth one day again. 

And so it happened that Drebber took Strangerson on a foray to the club Rache. It was meant to be simply something to spice up their sex life, which had of late grown stale, yet it ended up with a complete disillusion of their relationship. For at the club, Strangerson came upon an American prostitute with steely eyes and a drooping moustache and he instantly knew that he had found Hope again. He told Drebber that he was leaving, though kept the name of his true love secret so that the Mormons would have a hard time finding them again. As a final retribution for keeping them apart for so long, the two men broke into Drebber’s home while he was visiting friends with his wife and fucked on his bed. Drebber could neither admit that he knew this, nor that he had given his wife’s ring away to a miscreant, and so was forced to lie to the police. 

“And this marriage ceremony,” I asked. “How did you come to know of it?”

“That was sheer luck, my friend. By investigating the jewelers of the area, I hoped to figure out some way to help Misters Hope and Strangerson, who I understood were fleeing back to New York. But instead I ran into the two of them while they were looking to get a copy made of the ruby ring. I instantly recognized who they were and what they were up to and offered my services as an officiant at their wedding.”

“How magnificent!” I exclaimed.

“I had been thinking that I would help them escape and begin their new life together, and this seemed like an even better use of my connections and my abilities.”

The boisterous crowd continued dancing in the dim light of the club. From the corner of my eyes, I could see that several of the men—most of them quite drunk—had begun to remove their shirts and were currently slipping and sliding their half-nude bodies against one another as the music swelled. Even during the wedding ceremony, there had been a number of ribald jokes, a great deal of backs being slapped, several crowd-members caressing their inflating implements beneath their elegant clothes. It was understood by all that Hope and Strangerson’s vows had not included exclusivity and many were awaiting the moment when the new grooms decided to transform their after-party into a bacchanalia. 

As for me, my vision was filled with Holmes and his kind expression. He seemed to be regarding me in a way he never had before.

“It is wonderful,” I told him. “Your merits should be publically recognized. You should publish an account of the case. If you won’t, then I will for you.”

He smiled. “I suppose there are a few particulars you might have to leave out of this Study in Fornication, else the masses would be horrorstruck.” 

I shrugged. “Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo ipse domi.”

“The public hisses at me, but I applaud myself in my own house,” he translated.

The two of us sat across from one another, neither apparently able to come up with something further to say. Holmes bit his lip and gazed into my eyes.

“You know, John,” he said. “There is something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

But before he could utter whatever was on his lips, a quite-sloshed Strangerson came over and nearly fell upon Holmes’ shoulder. He said that he wanted to thank the detective for all of his help and began pulling him toward a small crowd of men that included his new husband. He shouted something to Hope that I didn’t quite catch, but I was pretty sure it included the words ‘enormous cock.’

Holmes looked back at me with an apologetic countenance but I waved him away and smiled. Let him go have his fun. We could talk again later and, at the moment, it seemed that the party was about to take a rather delightful turn.

From afar, I watched as Hope, Strangerson, Holmes, and a small crowd of men laughed and touched one another. The particulars of their words were lost in the hullabaloo but it was clear that their conversation had turned to carnal matters. Many in the circle had thrown their arms around their companions’ shoulders. A few kept reaching for their crotches again and again. Finally, I saw Hope ask something of Holmes, to which my friend nodded. His belt was then unbuckled, his pants and underwear dropped to the floor, and the soft version of his gargantuan instrument tumbled out for all to see. Strangerson, I noticed, gasped at the sight. 

Holmes continued to laugh and talk as each of the men took turns caressing his slowly-engorging enormousness. He retained the casual air that had been in effect moments prior but the accipitrine gleam in his eye notified me that his mind had begun turning to other matters. The men in the circle marveled at his immense cock, which now began to rise like some magnificent contraption of considerable pleasure. Some of the dancing men had noticed the change in the sexual atmosphere and began kissing one another. Other groups in the shadows were engaged in their own foreplay, carefully stroking one another, slipping out of their clothes, beginning to nuzzle and neck. I even saw the proprietress Bess standing to one side, watching the events with rampant delight. 

Strangerson came up to Holmes, kissed him, and held Holmes’ heavy bullocks in his palm. He whispered something, to which Holmes nodded, and then dropped to his knees. Holmes’ enormity twitched before his face, a teardrop of precum glistening from its tip, and Strangerson seemed unable to believe both its dimensions nor the fact that he was encountering such an extravagance. Entranced, he placed the cockhead between his perfect lips. Holmes and the other men encouraged his actions, their own members straining in their pants.

At this moment, I saw Holmes turn and point to me. He said something to his small audience and then crooked his finger to call me over. I had been enjoying leaning back in my seat, rubbing my prodigious tool beneath my clothing while simultaneously circling my right nipple with my thumb. But seeing how the men all beckoned me as well, I decided to take them up on their entreaties. 

Strangerson was still working away on Holmes’ sizeable dick as I came to stand in the circle. 

“I told—ah—I told these boys,” said Holmes, trying hard to maintain his composure, “That—oh yes—that you possessed quite an appealing appendage yourself. They all would like to see it.”

I looked at those gathered in the eyes. “Is that so?” Furious nods of assent went around the circle. “Well they will all have to judge for themselves.”

And with that, I fished out my own quite raging erection, eliciting peals of excitement from my audience. Several began to disrobe, touching themselves and their nearest companions with unrestrained lasciviousness.

“What did I tell you?” said Holmes. “His cock is nearly—ahhh—nearly as big as mine.” 

Hope, who was perhaps more forward than his new husband, came over and tugged at my ballsack. “It’s one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.” He immediately dropped down and placed my head in his mouth, eliciting a satisfied exhalation from me. His soft tongue traced over the engorged tip of my implement as he sent it to explore the interior of my sensitive foreskin. The men around us broke into a Edenic state, their clothing doffed, their bodies beginning to writhe against one another in a lurid display of virile contentment. My eyes drank in the sight of beards and body hair, stiff sausages, downy buttocks, bushy crotches, shaggy legs, and all manner of gorgeous manhood beginning to consummate their desires around me.

The newlyweds remained on the floor between Holmes and I, their oral cavities stuffed with our substantial tools. Breaking away, Hope and Strangerson turned to one another and kissed excitedly before switching positions so that each now had a new cock in their mouth. Caught up in a riot of sensations, my flatmate and I came close to one another, our arms thrown around each other’s shoulders, our foreheads leaning together as we watched the stunning performance beneath us. By this point, we had all removed our clothing and I relished the view of Hope’s naked hirsute body engaging in deftly swallowing Holmes’ copious beauty, which was still unparalleled among all that I had seen in the world. Strangerson’s soft tongue swirled around my own thick shaft, causing radiations of absolute joy to emanate from my loins. 

But at a debaucherous celebration in their honor, the married couple was in high demand and so it was not too long before Strangerson and Hope were called away to engage with other gorgeous men. Holmes and I stood there a moment after they left, grinning at one another like schoolboys. A nervous tickle spread through my belly as he approached within inches of my face.

“Look at you, John,” he said. “You are a marvelous creation. I apologize that we were interrupted earlier.”

Not quite understanding where this was going, I told my friend that it was no matter. “Thank you for kicking off these excellent festivities.”

His head turned to watch the decadence all around us—the swallowed cocks, the fingered arseholes—but then came back to look me squarely in the eyes. “I simply wished to express how much I have enjoyed meeting you. You are quite unlike anyone I have encountered. I hope that we will have a long and lasting friendship, you and I.”

And with that, he leaned in and planted his tender lips upon mine. Caught unawares, I melted into his embrace. Our intimate connection caused a swelling in my breast and I knew then and there that I was in love with Sherlock Holmes. Because of the earlier actions of our new companions, we were both in quite a randy state and so my hand slipped around the girth of his cock just as his hand did the same to my member. I tugged at his preposterous prominence, feeling its incredible size and weight for the first time. His own exploration of my implement sent inundations of bliss throughout my body. 

The two of us broke away, the enchanting spell between us reaching its natural endpoint. We smiled at one another, and it seemed that each of us was awaiting the other’s reaction before we could proceed. Holmes crooked his head to one side and then swung a muscly arm around my back, pointing me out towards the saturnalian sights around us. 

“Come now, chum. A veritable wonderland awaits us here. Let’s have ourselves a time.”

And I agreed. Whatever my feelings for Holmes, I wanted more than anything to enjoy myself during this masculine episode, to touch and be touched, to fuck and be fucked, and to watch others engage in sexual congress of astounding variety and exhilaration. 

Spotting another circle of burly men, I walked over and got down on the floor between them. Their previous cocksucker had just departed and so I offered my services to the proffered appendages, each wet with spit and pre-ejaculatory fluid. A half dozen dicks surrounded me now and I took one in each hand and a third in my mouth, delighting as the remainder took turns slapping my face with their shafts and bullocks. My existence became nothing beyond the consuming of cock as each man took his turn between my lips. 

As one rather large specimen filled my throat, I looked up to see a familiar face. The sapphire eyes and elegant moustache of Jack Saul greeted me with a wink as he bucked his oversized instrument against my lips. A moment later, I was drowning on the dick of Jefferson Hope, who was kissing Jack Saul with abandon. The next man in line, I didn’t recognize, though his instrument tasted so heavenly that I impelled him to finish inside my mouth, tasting the delectable volume of cum he deposited within. This stranger, who was handsome beyond compare, then turned his arse towards me and requested that I play with his pucker, an appeal I could not readily refuse. 

My tongue dove upon the tight aperture volunteered to me, savoring its contractions and the excited yelps I elicited from its owner. His buttocks were exceedingly hairy and I delighted in running my fingers up and down their forested curvature. Standing up, I tapped my hardness against this pliable rear entry. Encouraging calls came from both the men around us as well as my new partner, who pressed back his curly-haired head to give me a kiss. As my rod slipped into the first part of his slick slot, he gasped at my great size but grunted affirmatively to let me know the incursion had been appreciated. Our friends around us helped out, passing me a bottle of lubricant and even rubbing it over my fat tool when I pulled out for a moment to allow my companion to relax. 

The scent of male sweat filled my nostrils as my endowment returned to the snug and sensuous compartment from which it had been removed. Rugged hands ran over my brawny chest as I slid forward and several companions leaned in to kiss me. I felt a feathery touch on the curve of my buttocks, its gentle pressure impelling me farther into the incredible chute of the brute below me. He howled with delight when I reached my maximum depth, stopping only when a precum-dripping dick was placed into his mouth. Both my instrument and my nipples had never felt so hard before, my body stoked to a place of inconceivable passion. 

At this moment, I sensed a wet tongue on my exposed arsehole. Looking back, I saw the cinnamon-skinned Moslem youth who had shared his huqqa with me yesterday. His long-lashed eyes and grizzled beard peeked up from between my cheeks and I winked at his instinctive consummation of my innermost desires. He continued his torrid exploration of my backdoor as I began to slip in and out of the astonishing aperture beneath me. To fuck while being analingually stimulated in such a manner was a nearly-overwhelming feeling and it took most of my willpower not to ejaculate on the spot.

I was glad to delay the orgasm for now the Moor stood up behind me, tapping his lurid purple-headed member against my pucker. In a fugue state, I nodded my head and felt his thick serpentine gift slip past my sphincter. He pushed it to full hilt with hardly any resistance, my antechamber stretching with ease to accommodate the enchanting beast of his implement. While issuing cries of ecstasy, I stood impaled between two exquisite men, one whose obliging arsehole was housing my immense bequest while the other was broadening my tight outlet with his own gargantuan manhood. 

The Moslem came forward to hug me from behind and pinch both of my incredibly-aroused nipples, diving his contrivance in and out of my slit as he did so. The oscillations were transferred to the long-haired man below me, who wriggled and whimpered with joy, his throat simultaneously stuffed by a rather large instrument. The scenery and sensations were all too much for me and so I achieved my first orgasm of the night, expelling a donation into my penetrated partner just as the Moor shuddered behind me. I felt a delightful rush into my own chute, leaning back my face to kiss the beauty now filling me with his cream. Almost as soon as I pulled out of the hairy-arsed man beneath me, another enormous cock squeezed its way between those extraordinary and voracious cheeks. 

Taking a refractory break on a couch, I watched the couplings continue. A pair was fucking in the missionary position on the seat beside me and, as I recuperated, I took the opportunity to kiss them both, slapping the penetrator on his chiseled rump as he slapped his bullocks against his companion’s buttocks. A bit farther afield, I saw a man being held up by a group, who passed him around so that each could cherish the pucker he brandished high in the air. More acrobatic maneuvers seemed to be occurring in the distant darkness, from which I could only hear the sounds of gratified orifices being stimulated by sodden tools. When I looked back at the partners next to me, they had been joined by a third. The eager penetrated man must have had a particularly cooperative aperture because I watched in fascination and ardor as the new man plunged his good-sized implement into the enthusiastic hole while the previous partner remained simultaneously lodged within. 

All of this put me back in willing condition rather quickly, and soon I was up and about in the club again. I almost instantly spotted my next amusement—a row of men bent over a comfortable settee, each proudly displaying their eager outlets for anyone to take their satisfaction with. A few muscular trailblazers were currently pumping away at an arse or two but the majority of the buttocks seemed sadly unoccupied. Deciding to rectify this misfortune, I stroked my implement back to full hardness and set myself at the end of the line. I wanted my dick to savor each of these mouthwatering offerings and, after covering it with some proffered lubricant, sank my colossus into the first compartment. 

Its owner gave a gratified grunt as I began to buck and grind. The pucker was a veritable utopia, both snug and pliable, the ideal level of slickness for me to partake in its pleasures. Looking down the row, I marveled at the selection before me, each arse with its own distinct splendor. Some were covered in wiry hairs, others smooth and soft. They ranged in curvature and solidity and I relished in pinching and slapping each one as I traveled the queue, sticking fingers into those nearby, watching as their fine-looking proprietors looked back at me and smiled. I became lost in the hedonistic action of ploughing each rear end, my mind swirling with intoxicating emotion, enjoying the freedom of this emancipatory revelry.

The party lasted for hours and I came several times that night, not all of which I need to relate. During the final occurrence, I had once again found myself pressed between two men. The one below me was on his back, his bronzed skin suggesting he was an Italian, or perhaps Greek, a profuse carpet of hair covering his chest, which I delighted in tugging as I pressed my cock into his accommodating receptacle. The man penetrating me was a gigantic Viking, with a bright red beard and long locks of hair that I ran my other hand through as he repeatedly incurred his way into my tender pucker. The rhapsodic pleasure bathing me from all sides could not have been more agreeable, and I was in rapturous paradise, consumed by carnal matters.

It was then that I noticed Holmes, quite nearby, in much the same position as me. The man below him was that lowlife John Rance, though this time I saw his features in a more flattering light. Behind Holmes was Jack Saul, his massive instrument sliding to and fro inside Holmes’ Hellenic buttocks. Catching my eye, Holmes gave me an enthusiastic wink, and our excited expressions spoke volumes about all that we had encountered that night. Holmes began to cultivate a faster pace with his magnificent endowment, pushing back and forth between Rance and Saul in a manner that suggested a playful air but which was at the same time quite arousing.

Seeing these three, while also surrounded by two more unbelievable creations, penetrating and being penetrated, it was all too much for me. I began to come, my fourth or fifth attainment that evening, the orgasm both understated and yet euphoric. I believe I achieved what the Eastern mystics call nirvana, that moment when one is caught up in the awe-inspiring elation of being. My backdoor partner, perhaps feeling my twitches, achieved his own critical period then, and I felt a warm flood of semen rush out to intermingle with all the others inside my cavity. Our third must have also been quite close, for his dick now issued forth a parabolic fountain of cum that shot up and landed in a glob on his furry chest.

Stimulated by these sights, the trio beside us now also found their bliss. First Rance, who shot out sticky ejaculate that coated himself and his penetrators. Then Saul, whose eyes rolled to the back of his head and he pressed his dick deep inside his companion. And finally Holmes gave forth a celestial cry, his powerful physique shuddering as he drained the contents of his mammoth bullocks into the pliant chute in which his exceptional member was encased. He even pulled out his fantastic contrivance—so improbable in its size and capacity for generating pleasure—and fired a volley of sultry gobbets in every direction about him. 

That six men could each achieve their completion nearly-simultaneously beside one another may seem unbelievable, especially to some readers. But such was life for me with Sherlock Holmes. 

THE END

Thank you to anyone who read all the way to the end. This was a fun piece to produce. Comments welcome here or at sirarthurpornandoyle@yahoo.com


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